Meet the Leaders
Founder, Chairman Board of Directors
Neil R. Wiley
Neil R. Wiley is a 37-year national security leader who served as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence — the second-highest position in the U.S. Intelligence Community — where he directed the integration and operations of 18 intelligence agencies and oversaw the $62.7 billion National Intelligence Program. He previously served as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and as Director for Analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading all-source intelligence for policymakers, military commanders, and warfighters. A retired U.S. Navy officer, he was created an Honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Neil is widely recognized as an Intelligence Community thought leader in the ethical application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to national security. He currently serves on the Federal Advisory Board for Amazon Web Services, the Board of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, and as a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group and SOS International. He brings to DEMOS deep expertise in intelligence operations, AI governance, risk management, and the intersection of emerging technology and national security at the highest levels of government
Valen Wardak
Founder, Director & CEO
Co-Founder Valen Wardak leads DEMOS AI Lab's technology vision and product architecture. An AI researcher currently pursuing his MS in Computer Science at Stanford maintaining a 4.12 GPA with two A-plus grades, he is an American Rhodes Scholar, Marshall Finalist, and Georgetown University Valedictorian under the tutelage of U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. His mission to democratize AI was ignited when he won Stanford's CS109 Probability for Computer Scientists competition—Professor Jerry Cain called it one of the most substantial submissions in Stanford's history. Through creating a small offline model for Dorado Hospital that beat 400 students, Valen discovered we need both small AI that works offline in places like Puerto Rico and AI that thinks natively in languages beyond English.
A 25-year veteran of technology, finance, and government contracting, Valen began his career as an investment banker in Merrill Lynch's Technology M&A division in Palo Alto during the dot- com boom. After September 11, he transitioned to government contracting, where he founded and scaled companies that managed over $3 billion in DOD operations. His firm VLOX executed a $3.2 billion IDIQ logistics contract with a 99% mission success rate. Earlier, he transformed Technologists Inc. from a small federal contractor averaging $200–500K annually into a major engineering powerhouse, building an engineering division that won over $300 million in DOD contracts in just two years.
Mark Watson
Founder, Chief Government Contracts Advisor
Co-founder Mark Watson brings unparalleled US government contracting expertise to spearhead Demos's commercial strategy. As a former Air Force contracting officer with unlimited government contracting authority, he personally oversaw and authorized billions of dollars in defense technology procurements. With 25 years spanning military service, defense tech, and AI startups, Mark led special operations units in the field and later built a defense contracting firm from a handful of people to 300-plus employees. He's grown companies that landed on the Inc 500 Fastest Growing list. Having sat on both sides of the table—awarding contracts as a government official and winning contracts as a contractor—Mark knows exactly how to position Demos as the trusted solution for the US Government and contractors . His unique combination of DOD procurement authority and entrepreneurial success makes him the perfect leader to transform Demos into a success story.
Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Ted Lavarias
Co-Founder Ted Lavarias is a full-stack software developer and Linux systems specialist with over two decades of experience building production web applications. A former cybersecurity associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he led QA for internal audits of Fortune 500 companies managing over $3 trillion in assets and performed Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work across Unix, Windows, and mainframe platforms. He has since built production Django applications serving industrial manufacturers, municipal governments, and engineering firms — systems that run on Linux servers under real operational constraints. A U.S. Naval Academy alumnus and Rutgers University computer science graduate who earned magna cum laude honors, he is also one of the top-rated computer science tutors in the country with over 4,000 hours of instruction and a perfect 5.0 rating. He brings to DEMOS deep expertise in Python, Linux infrastructure, and the practical engineering of web applications that work at scale — along with a rare ability to translate complex technical systems for non-technical teams.
Board Director
Dr. Amy Soller
Dr. Amy Soller is an executive AI leader and intelligence officer with more than 25 years of experience spanning government and the private sector. An internationally recognized pioneer in artificial intelligence, she has led AI capability development, intelligence and counterintelligence analysis, and the formation of national-level AI policy and strategy at the highest levels of the U.S. national security enterprise. Most recently, Amy served as Mission Manager and Intelligence Community Lead at xAI and, prior to that, as Senior AI Architect and Intelligence Community Lead at NVIDIA, where she drove the adoption and integration of advanced AI into the intelligence mission. Over a 14-year tenure with the U.S. Department of War, she held a series of senior executive roles — including Senior Executive AI Lead and Deputy Office Chief — directing enterprise AI strategy, overseeing engineering organizations of more than 1,000 scientists and engineers, and advising national AI policy. She has also served as Deputy Assistant Director in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and as a board member of DARPA's Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group. Amy holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Program, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, from Boston University. She brings to DEMOS AI Lab deep expertise in applied machine learning, signal processing, and the deployment of mission-critical AI systems.
Chairman, Board of Advisors
Brian Hibbeln
Brian Hibbeln is a three-decade veteran of the Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community who has spent his career operationalizing emerging technology for warfighters and intelligence operators. He served as Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Special Capabilities and was the founding Director of the DoD's Special Capabilities Office, where he led joint-capability transformation across a $2 billion portfolio. A former Chief Scientist at the National Reconnaissance Office and director of the Naval Postgraduate School's Remote Sensing Center managing over $8 billion in government contracts, he currently serves as General Partner at StealthPoint Ventures, Senior Advisor for Blackstone Private Equity, and Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. He holds a BS from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a Master's in Physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
