Benson Co-Founded Motiv Power Systems, which was awarded Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas Award” for transportation in 2019. He went on to design luxury cars at Lucid Motors and batteries at SpaceX. Benson was the 2023 Pizza Expo Keynote speaker.

Brian spent six years at SpaceX as a Mechanical Engineer. Brian led the design of various mechanical & battery projects and spearheaded the certification process with NASA and Air Force technical regulators.

James spent six years at SpaceX as the responsible engineer for launch vehicle batteries. While at Carnegie Mellon he spent four years working and performing research in the Biorobotics lab.

James is a 30-year industry executive having held senior positions for Dave’s Hot Chicken, Blaze Pizza, The Habit Burger, Mendocino Farms, Wetzel’s Pretzels, and more. He is currently the CFO of Dave’s Hot Chicken.

Alexis was a graduate analyst for the USC Marshall Venture Fund investing in early-stage ventures. She was later a Fellow of the PledgeLA Venture Capital Fellowship where she invested in early-stage ventures and helped founders develop their business models and market strategies.

Josh spent seven years at SpaceX developing software to automate the design of avionics systems. He later joined inVia Robotics and developed their Automated Storage and Retrieval System. Josh also sits on the board of Blue Robotics.

Arik spent four years at SpaceX as a Test Engineer, automating the testing and data capture of a variety of flight parts including landing legs, deployment mechanisms, and parachutes. While getting his Masters in controls, he partnered with NASA Langley Research Center to create an automated test bed for the HELIOS demonstrator.

Matt spent four years at SpaceX pushing the envelope of spacecraft battery performance as a Battery Mechanical Engineer.

Melody has spent the majority of her career in the start-up space, managing Human Resource functions at companies like Hyperloop One, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX.