The Sensing Stack: How are Multimodal Inputs Transforming GEOINT?

Curt Blake is Senior Of Counsel in the Seattle office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he is a member of the corporate practice. Curt is an attorney and senior executive with more than 25 years of experience leading organizations in high-growth industries—and over 10 years as CEO of Spaceflight, Inc.—at the forefront of the NewSpace revolution. He has extensive expertise in strategic planning, financial analysis, legal strategy, M&A, and space commercialization, with deep knowledge about the unique challenges of NewSpace growth and the roadmap to success in the that ecosystem. He has forged relationships with key commercial, civilian, and defense-related customers. Milestones include opening the Indian PSLV to U.S. commercial customers, the first dedicated rideshare Falcon 9 launch vehicle mission deploying a then-record 64 satellites, and launching the first non-governmental mission to the moon (SpaceIL), as well as developing, launching, and orbiting several flavors of Sherpa, the Spaceflight OTV.

Scot Currie is vice president of BlackSky’s Geospatial Solutions Division where he oversees execution of all BlackSky development contracts supporting the U.S. government and international partners. Scot also served as BlackSky’s chief solutions architect, in the office of the CTO, where he was responsible for providing technical solutions and oversight for BlackSky’s space and ground R&D initiatives in support of customer requirements.
Before joining BlackSky, Scot was the director of the Source Operations Group at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). In this capacity Scot was the senior executive responsible for all U.S. national and commercial GEOINT satellite operations serving the defense and intelligence community. During this time, he managed the engineering and integration of new U.S. and foreign satellite systems into the National GEOINT enterprise and introduced the first automated tasking models to meet emerging requirements for tactical ISR missions. He performed several tours at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) developing next-generation defense and intelligence community requirements for national satellite programs and ground operations.
Scot served three years in the United Kingdom implementing novel GEOINT technical capabilities to the U.K. Ministry of Defence and was the first program manager for the NGA’s $10 billion, 10-year EnhancedView contract. The EnhancedView program was designed to integrate commercial electro-optical capabilities into the larger defense and intelligence community enterprise and was the largest contract ever awarded by the Agency.
Scot received a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration from Lynchburg University and a Master of Science degree in systems engineering from George Washington University.

Jonny Dyer is Co-Founder & CEO of Muon Space, with a remarkable career spanning aerospace, geospatial technology, and complex systems engineering across industry-shaping companies. As Chief Engineer at Skybox Imaging, he led development of the largest high-resolution satellite constellation ever deployed before the company’s $500M acquisition by Google in 2014. At Google, he headed Maps’ data collection team developing Street View cars and aircraft platforms, then served as Senior Director at Lyft’s Level 5 Autonomous Vehicle group leading vehicle platform design and deployment. Currently an Operating Partner at Space Capital and advisor to Ubiquity.vc, Jonny also serves as a founding member of EDF’s MethaneSat Technical Advisory Group and contributed to the National Academy’s APOSS study on commercial SmallSat opportunities. He holds MS and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and has authored widely-cited research spanning thermodynamics, radiation effects, and imaging systems.

Alex Haro is the co-founder and CEO of Hubble Network. Before founding Hubble, he co-founded Life360, which he successfully took from an early-stage idea all the way through to its IPO. Life360 now boasts over 88 million monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide and generates over $300 million in annual revenue. In 2015, Forbes recognized him in the ’30 Under 30′ list for Consumer Technology. Additionally, he holds more than 12 patents in the fields of location and Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). Alex studied computer science at Pomona College and Harvey Mudd College.

Dan Katz is the CEO and Co-Founder of Orbital Sidekick, whose constellation of 5 GHOSt satellites provides persistent monitoring solutions powered by Hyperspectral Imaging. This unique chemical fingerprinting capability enables unparalleled target monitoring services for Energy, Mining, and National Security on a global scale. Prior to starting Orbital Sidekick in 2016, Dan spent 5 years at SSL (now Maxar) and previously worked on multi-billion dollar civil infrastructure programs. His educational background is in Physics and Aerospace Engineering.

Dan Smoot is Chief Executive Officer of Maxar Intelligence, a role he has held since his appointment in November 2023.

He is leading the company’s push to bring the geospatial industry into a new age of intelligence. For over three decades, he has helped scale some of the world’s most innovative software and IT companies and worked closely with the defense and intelligence communities to integrate cutting-edge technologies into national security architectures. Today, Dan is guiding Maxar’s evolution to deliver secure, software-enabled products that use the power of geospatial data and technology to help customers get mission-critical insights, faster.

Prior to joining Maxar, he served as CEO of Riverbed Technology, where he led the IT company’s transformation from a hardware provider to a software-focused business that today serves government and commercial customers, including national security agencies and 95% of the Fortune 100. Dan had also previously served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Customer Officer throughout his tenure at the company.

Prior to Riverbed Technology, Dan held several senior roles at Salesforce, including Executive Vice President of Global Partner Sales and Executive Vice President of Market Readiness. There, he optimized the company’s sales and go-to-market processes to grow the sales pipeline and accelerate revenue generation, ultimately helping lay the foundation for one of the fastest periods of growth in Salesforce’s history. Earlier in his career, Dan served as Senior Vice President of Global Customer Operations at VMWare and held a variety of senior sales, operations and finance roles over 13 years at Cisco.

Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from UC Irvine. He was a board member of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Western Affiliate and was previously the Chairman of the AHA’s Greater Bay Area chapter.