Deus Vult Industries

Sterling Peck is Chief Executive Officer of Deus Vult Industries. He is a U.S. military veteran and service-disabled business owner who built the parent around tactical manufacturing, aerospace, next-generation defense research, and construction.

He carries specialized training in antiterrorism assessment, active-shooter response, nuclear and biological reconnaissance, and related field work. After service he worked as a contractor in high-value asset protection, providing close protection and secure escort for protected personnel and material. That is advance work, movement security, and the handoff with the agencies already on the ground.

He is active in research and development on next-generation warfighting drones, equipment, and weaponry, and he works the programs first-hand: mounts and stations, unmanned systems, ammunition and service-weapon families, and the industrial path from a drawing to a live article. That work runs through Deus Vult’s operating companies, including iR8 Tactical and Kyon Dynamics, with related platform work on DAS gear, helicopters, and drones.

As CEO of Deus Vult Industries he owns the parent, not a single shop. He sets the structure and officer bench across the subsidiaries, sits in board and operational meetings, and is in the room when new companies are formed and when national meetings with CEOs, COOs, and state representatives decide how the group grows. Construction sits in that same structure: he founded Peck General Construction as a veteran-owned federal contractor, and it remains the group’s building arm. He aligns that company with tactical manufacturing and protection (iR8 Tactical), licensed R&D and energetics (Kyon Dynamics), aerospace operations (ADM Aero), and related commercial ventures under one holding discipline: who is accountable, what can be built, what can be licensed, and what can be delivered.

Peck’s job as CEO is to keep those companies pointed the same direction—capital, compliance, field operations, and R&D—so Deus Vult is a working industrial group rather than a stack of names. He brings the veteran’s eye for what works under stress, contractor experience in protecting assets on the move, and direct involvement in the drones, equipment, and weapons the group is trying to put on a qualification path.

Preston D. McGee, Sr., a biochemist, is Chief Operating Officer of Deus Vult Industries, where he oversees operations, government relationships, and commercial execution across the group. He is also founder and Chief Executive Officer of Firelink, a fast-growing intelligence systems integrator, and brings that operating and technical experience to the Deus Vult role.

His work covers the design, integration, and protection of SCIFs, classified facilities, and other mission-critical environments; patented counter-UAS technologies that detect, track, identify, and mitigate drone threats across defense and critical infrastructure; and enterprise and mission-network cybersecurity for government, defense, and critical infrastructure, including AI-driven threat detection and zero-trust architectures. He integrates robotics, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence as force multipliers for mission effectiveness, operational safety, and decision superiority, and applies counter-proliferation strategies against the spread of advanced weapon systems, dual-use technologies, and illicit supply chains. The standard across that work is to secure the mission, modernize the enterprise, and deliver without compromise.

He brings more than three decades of federal government service and subsequent work with military and public-sector customers, government contractors, and commercial operating companies. His background spans biochemistry, medical imaging, information technology, and project management, including work associated with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. He has built and advised government-contractor and commercial businesses on program execution, partnership formation, and the operating architecture required to perform in regulated markets.

A proven operator and deal-maker, he teams with industry leaders, innovators, tribal partners, and government customers to turn complex federal and commercial requirements into executable programs and durable government relationships.

Jeff Trice is Co-Chief Operating Officer of Deus Vult Industries. He is a business development executive, entrepreneur, operator, board member, and strategic advisor with more than 30 years of leadership experience helping organizations accelerate growth through strategic partnerships, market expansion, operational excellence, and relationship-driven business development. He says he serves God first.

He is Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Marketing Business Development LLC (SMBD); Managing Partner of EB5 Regional Holdings; Managing Partner of Elite Resource Services; Partner and Chief Operating Officer of STEELCRAFT; Vice President of Business Development at Oppos; and Director of Operations and Business Development for Kenny Kas Collection. He is Chairman of the Finance Committee and a board member of Hunters Point Family, a board member of the Membership Committee of Black Contractors Owners & Executives (BCOE), and a board member of the American Employer Foundation.

His work spans business development, economic development, hospitality, cybersecurity, clean energy, supplier diversity, investment, construction, fashion, and community impact.

He built that record in retail, identifying future leaders and developing talent while leading operational excellence, with responsibility for annual revenue of more than $100 million. The career has been creating strategic partnerships, accelerating growth, and helping organizations navigate complex business challenges across industries. He founded Strategic Marketing Business Development LLC, a business development and strategic growth firm that helps companies expand market reach, develop partnerships, and create sustainable growth.

He co-founded and operates STEELCRAFT, an eco-luxury hospitality and social impact enterprise in Guatemala, where he is Chief Operating Officer and partner. STEELCRAFT is rooted in philanthropic work and is built to create sustainable economic opportunity through clean water, clean air, community development, and responsible tourism.

He has served as an operator, advisor, executive, and growth leader in hospitality, logistics, construction, technology, cybersecurity, clean energy, economic development, and investment. In governance he chairs the Finance Committee of Hunters Point Family and sits on the BCOE board, guiding financial stewardship, organizational growth, community empowerment, and economic opportunity.

The measurable record is more than 30 years of executive leadership and business development, and more than 25 years leading teams, partnerships, and growth in retail. He has developed thousands of executive and professional relationships nationally, and has advised, connected, supported, or introduced hundreds of organizations to strategic opportunities. He has founded, co-founded, operated, or advised multiple companies. His weekly leadership outreach reaches more than 400 business professionals. The work spans the United States, Canada, Central America, and Africa, and public, private, nonprofit, and social-impact organizations.

His expertise is business development and strategic partnerships, leadership development and executive advisory, economic development and supplier diversity, market expansion and growth strategy, operations and organizational development, and relationship capital. He also works hospitality development, cybersecurity business development, clean energy, project management, workforce development, and community impact.

He has operated, advised, or developed business in construction, real estate development, hospitality and tourism, cybersecurity, technology, logistics and transportation, clean energy, economic development, supplier diversity, government contracting, manufacturing, healthcare staffing, retail, investment and EB-5 development, professional services, and nonprofit organizations.

When he walks into a business, he looks for the opportunities that sit between people, relationships, and strategy. Many organizations focus on transactions. He focuses on connections: untapped partnerships, hidden revenue, leadership alignment, underutilized talent, market expansion, relationship capital that has not been used, and the gap between vision and execution. He believes many companies already have what they need to grow. The work is aligning people, strategy, and execution.

One principle that has guided his career is that the R in contact to contract stands for relationship. Long-term business success is built on trust, credibility, consistency, and genuine relationships. Transactions may create revenue, but relationships create sustainable opportunity. Another principle he shares is that you can only grow to what you are exposed to. Expanding perspective expands opportunity.

What draws him to the American Employer Foundation is the belief that the strongest businesses create value for both the organization and the people who make that success possible. Through STEELCRAFT he has seen that lasting success comes from investing in people, creating opportunity, and strengthening communities alongside growth. He treats stronger businesses and stronger employees as the same outcome: greater enterprise value for the employer and greater financial opportunity for the employee, which leads to stronger companies, stronger families, and stronger communities.

Creating wealth and opportunity, as he defines it, means helping people participate in value creation, not simply work inside it. That means stronger businesses, sustainable growth, future leaders, wider careers, an ownership mindset, stronger families, and support for local communities. STEELCRAFT reinforced his view that a business should leave a community stronger than it found it. Enterprise value and social impact are not mutually exclusive. When the business gets stronger, employees get stronger, and the community gets stronger.

Beyond the operating roles, he is an active mentor and connector in minority business and supplier diversity, a speaker and advocate for servant leadership, and an advocate for economic mobility, workforce development, community empowerment, and philanthropy. He was raised in a military family, which shaped a leadership philosophy centered on service, adaptability, and stewardship.

He has been a guest panel speaker for the Cisco Supplier Development Program, a speaker at BCOE leadership and industry events, and the BCOE Advocate of the Year in 2025. He takes part in national forums on supplier diversity, economic development, and business leadership, and he speaks across construction, supplier diversity, economic development, hospitality, and business development.

His career rests on the belief that relationships are one of the most valuable forms of capital a leader can develop. Over more than 30 years he has focused on connecting people, organizations, and opportunities in ways that create sustainable growth, economic impact, and long-term value. Whether in business, community leadership, or philanthropy, the aim is the same: help people and organizations become stronger than they were before.

Dr. A. Ray Chaudhuri is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and operator. He is currently an operating partner at Triad Industries, focusing on operations, financials, and growth. Over the last five years he has been the CEO of a startup company which he has built into a $500 million valued business. He also advises, in a diminishing capacity, Oaklane Partners, a private equity group, on turnarounds, investments, and operations. In that role he helped turn around and create one of the nation’s leading healthy-meals companies, now operating in seven states.

He was recruited by the Chairman of Reliance Industries, a $100 billion-plus enterprise with a customer base of 450 million, reporting directly to the Chairman, to assist in the growth of a couple of areas in Asia. He grew those opportunities from concept to providing services to more than one million people a day in 2020. Earlier, he worked as a senior executive of all three global companies, two of which became unicorns at $3 billion and $15 billion valuations.

He was the CEO of a Stanford University technology spinout, which he grew from concept, raised funding for, and led to an acquisition. Dr. Chaudhuri also helped create one of the first global precision-medicine diagnostic companies, where he oversaw growth in close association with the CEO and grew the employee base from 12 to 600 and revenues from $1 million to $250 million, a valuation above $2 billion, in less than 18 months. In his career he has played various global CXO roles, including turnaround roles, and completed more than $1 billion in deals with large Fortune 500 companies. He started his career as a venture capitalist based in Maryland.

He advises startups, large global family offices, venture funds, and large U.S. academic institutions, including the University of California, San Francisco for a decade and Tulane University for the last four years. His background includes high-growth scaleups, operations, and finance. He has a PhD in Regenerative Medicine and an MBA in Finance.

J. Ben Segarra, Esq., LL.M. is Chief Legal Officer of Deus Vult Industries, where he oversees legal affairs, corporate governance, and commercial transactions across the group. A graduate of Duke University and the University of Virginia School of Law, he holds an LL.M. in Admiralty from Tulane University Law School. He began his career as a law clerk to a federal judge in Mobile, Alabama, and later served as Senior Maritime Associate at Maynard Cooper & Gale, including as Chair of the Salvage Committee of the Maritime Law Association of the United States.

He has structured, advised, and managed operating companies and special-purpose vehicles across maritime, government services, defense, and other regulated sectors. His work includes governmental and public-sector matters; counsel to government contractors and commercial contractors on formation, teaming, compliance, and contracting; ITAR and related export-control issues; and corporate and commercial transactions designed to create, protect, and realize enterprise value. He previously practiced admiralty and maritime law in Mobile and New Orleans, defending vessels and their owners in contract and tort claims. He is admitted to practice in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts of Alabama.

On the government side, Segarra advises companies that sell to public agencies and to the Department of Defense, and the contractors who team with them. The work covers how an operating company or a special-purpose vehicle is formed, who owns it, and whether that structure can sit in a prime or subcontract relationship. He counsels government contractors and commercial contractors on teaming agreements, the split of work and responsibility, flow-down of contract duties, and the compliance posture a buyer expects before it will put a supplier on a review path. The point of that counsel is practical. A defense or public-sector deal has to be writable, signable, and defensible when a contracting officer, a prime, or a diligence team opens the file.

His defense-industry work sits next to that contracting practice. He advises on the legal path for companies whose products, technical data, and services are built for military customers: what can be discussed in an open meeting, what has to stay inside a controlled channel, and how a commercial relationship is documented so it does not outrun the rules that apply to defense articles and defense services. He treats the Department of Defense customer, the prime contractor, and the commercial partner as three different audiences. Each one needs a different record, and the record has to match.

ITAR and related export controls are part of the same practice, not a side memo. Segarra advises on whether hardware, technical data, or a defense service is controlled, who inside or outside the company may receive it, and what has to be in place before it moves to a foreign person, a foreign partner, or across a border. That includes the licensing and agreement questions that come with manufacturing, brokering, and teaming in a defense group, and the discipline of keeping public materials unclassified while procurement-specific and export-aware material moves through controlled follow-up. He does not treat export control as a stamp at the end of a deal. It is a condition of the deal.

Bio coming soon

Richard J. Solberg Jr. is Chief Revenue Officer of Deus Vult Industries and the group's designated Insider Threat Program Senior Official. He directs revenue across the parent and its subsidiaries and leads sales and marketing for the corporations under the group.

He brings more than twenty-five years in international sales, marketing, and business development in the defense, aerospace, and security industries. His work has centered on connecting manufacturers with military, law-enforcement, and government end users, and on moving U.S.-made equipment into markets that require both commercial judgment and strict regulatory discipline.

Solberg is Managing Member and President of Cavalcade Services, LLC, which he founded in 2008 and operates from the Cleburne, Texas area. Under his leadership the firm has built a network of more than 400 agents in over 70 countries and serves as an intermediary for defense and security manufacturers, covering product introduction, export logistics, and compliance with ITAR and U.S. Commerce rules. Early Cavalcade contracts supplied tens of millions of rounds of U.S.-made ammunition and thousands of firearms in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2015 he delivered a $130 million U.S.-manufactured helicopter contract to a Middle East client. From 2016 he opened African markets and placed U.S.-made products with customers in more than 21 African nations. During the 2020–22 pandemic period the company delivered more than $65 million in PPE to domestic and international government buyers. Since 2022 Cavalcade has supported the Ukraine effort under contracts described in his published biography as totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The company also holds federal firearms licensing and has brokered under U.S. Department of State authorities.

Before Cavalcade, Solberg was a founding shareholder and International Sales and Marketing Manager at Milkor USA. He led adoption of the 40mm multi-shot grenade launcher by U.S. military and federal law-enforcement customers, securing an initial U.S. Marine Corps contract in 2005 and a five-year, $43 million agreement in 2010. He expanded the platform into Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, helped put ISO-compliant manufacturing agreements in place, oversaw quality and export-compliance processes, and wrote training manuals and field curricula for domestic and international users. Milkor products under that effort appeared in films including Transformers, Iron Man, and G.I. Joe, and on programs such as Future Weapons.

His career began in Alaska, where he launched Richie’s Guns and Ammo and built distributorships for manufacturers including Heckler & Koch USA and Sig Sauer, serving sporting, law-enforcement, and government customers. That work established the distribution, compliance, and relationship habits that later scaled into defense contracting.

Solberg has conducted business across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Clients and partners look to him for international due diligence, RFP development, supply-chain management, and government contracting. At Deus Vult Industries he applies that record to revenue control, subsidiary performance, and group-wide sales and marketing.

Gillum Bounds was raised in California’s High Desert, in a household where discipline was not a slogan. It was a standard. His late father, Irvin Bounds, was a United States Marine who served in some of the bloodiest battles in American history. From him, Gillum inherited a work ethic that does not quit, a respect for service, and the expectation that a man should stand up when it counts. That inheritance still shapes every chapter of his life.

The first of those chapters was combat sports. Gillum grew up inside the fight world with his brothers and trained heavily in mixed martial arts alongside athletes who would later become familiar names in the UFC. The gym taught him what his father had already begun to teach: pressure reveals character. Injuries eventually ended his own fighting path. They did not end the competitor in him. They redirected it.

He turned that same intensity toward business. Over more than two decades, Bounds built a marketing career across several fields, learning how brands are made, how stories travel, and how to put a product — or a mission — in front of the right people. That work carried him into exotic and custom automobiles, including high-end builds in the Newport Beach world through WTC and Estrella Motorsport, with cars that included Porsche and Lamborghini. He also worked on the ground as an entrepreneur and as a superintendent for Peck General Construction, where the job was not theory. It was crews, schedules, accountability, and getting the work done right.

Those lanes now meet at Deus Vult, where Bounds serves as Chief Marketing Officer. He brings more than twenty years of marketing experience, a builder’s sense of execution, and a communicator’s instinct for what people actually hear. Deus Vult is not a side project for him. It is the platform where business, service, and message are supposed to move together.

The message is personal. Bounds has made mental-health awareness a public fight, with particular attention to veterans, first responders, and men who have been told to stay silent. He is the host of Bad Company with GilBilly, a show and podcast built to put those conversations in the open — not as slogans, but as honest talk about trauma, comebacks, brotherhood, and the cost of carrying too much alone. He is also an outspoken advocate for natural treatment and real recovery, rather than the cycle of addictive prescription medication he believes has been pushed too easily and has damaged too many lives.

That sense of duty extends to protection. Bounds is trained in active-shooter response, personal protection, and protective escort work. The through-line is the same one his father left him: be useful when other people need you.

Gillum Bounds is not one thing. He is a fighter who became a marketer, a builder who became a spokesman, and a Marine’s son who turned inherited discipline into a living mission — for veterans, for first responders, and for anyone trying to come back from the kind of injury that does not always show on the outside.

Kim Heard is Chief Executive Officer of Kyon Dynamics Inc., a privately funded American defense-industrial company. He directs licensed manufacturing, research and development, and commercial execution across ammunition and energetics, advanced materials, precision machining, autonomous defense, and mission support. The work supports military agencies and other federal customers and runs through relationships with government contractors and commercial contractors. Kyon holds a Federal Explosives License and a Federal Firearms License and is organized for prime and military review. Lot records, process documentation, and partner-review packages are built so a regulated buyer can trace material, inspect the work, and evaluate a program on the record rather than on a claim.

Governmental contracting is the frame for that industrial work. Heard is responsible for the compliance architecture a defense program needs before a prime or a military customer will put a supplier on a review path. That covers Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification readiness mapped to NIST SP 800-171, controlled-unclassified-information intake and handling, supplier onboarding, and the evidence a flow-down or agency diligence team expects to see. Safeguarding expectations under the DFARS cybersecurity clauses, including 252.204-7012, and SPRS-aligned self-assessment practice sit inside that same architecture. Public channels stay unclassified. Sensitive, export-aware, and procurement-specific material moves through controlled follow-up. The point is practical: capacity that can be reviewed and protected, and government relationships that hold up when a prime or a military customer opens the file.

Before Kyon, Heard led Absolon, Inc., a McLean, Virginia firm he has directed since its formation in 2003. Absolon provided management consulting, information technology, and resource-staffing services to governmental and commercial clients. The practice covered business-process review, IT strategic planning, information security, project management, and training. That federal-client work is the base he now applies to licensed manufacturing and defense-program execution. He studied at Alabama State University.

Sterling Peck Jr. is Chief Operating Officer of Kyon Dynamics Inc. He works across all operational lines of the company and has been part of the formation of its related subsidiaries inside Deus Vult Industries.

He joined Peck General Construction in 2022. There he supervised Southern California Edison substation construction, running jobsite evolutions from the field: crew coordination, schedule, safety, and the practical work of putting utility infrastructure in the ground and online. That is where he learned to run a contract as a supervisor, not as a spectator.

He later moved to GWB Trading as Chief Operating Officer. Inside GWB he also worked research and development for Kyon Dynamics, then stepped over as COO of Kyon Dynamics Inc., the role he holds now. At Kyon he owns operations across the company’s working fields: manufacturing posture, R&D support, logistics, daily execution, and the coordination required to keep programs moving from concept toward usable hardware.

He works alongside the officers of the corporations under Deus Vult Industries. He sits in board meetings and operational meetings, takes part in national meetings with CEOs and COOs, and has been in the room with state representatives, business leaders, and other executives. He holds a leading role in the group’s structure and in how the subsidiaries were formed. His job is the operational half of that work: he helps make the decisions stick on the floor after they leave the table.

His path is construction supervisor to operating officer. He brings field control from Southern California Edison substation work into the defense-industrial and R&D environment at Kyon Dynamics, and he stays in the meetings that decide how the wider Deus Vult Industries group is built and run.

Bob Ingersoll is Chief Technology Officer of Kyon Dynamics Inc., where he oversees systems engineering, integration, test, and the technical architecture required to take mission-critical hardware from prototype through qualification. A veteran aerospace systems engineer, he spent three decades at Hughes Aircraft and Raytheon. He served as a Senior Principal Systems Engineer, leading integration and test and verification and validation on high-stakes missile and mission systems.

That billet is the point in a weapons program where the drawing has to become a weapon that flies. A Senior Principal Systems Engineer owns the interfaces between guidance, propulsion, airframe, and the test equipment that has to prove them. He writes the verification plan, decides what a test actually demonstrates, and holds the line when a subsystem passes on the bench and fails when it is bolted to the rest of the missile. Integration and test is where those failures show up. Verification and validation is the record that says the failure was found, fixed, and shown not to come back. Ingersoll led that work on systems the government expected to be ready, not merely designed.

His program of record was Tomahawk. He took the cruise missile from prototype through flight-test execution to operational readiness for the U.S. Navy and other government customers. Prototype work is one standard. Flight test is another. A Tomahawk has to leave the rail or the tube, navigate, and arrive as the specification says it will, under the conditions the Navy will actually use. Operational readiness is the step after a successful flight: the weapon, the procedures, and the evidence a fleet customer needs before it will treat the system as something it can deploy. Ingersoll's job on that path was to make the test mean something. A shot that cannot be explained is not a qualification.

After Raytheon he applied the same systems-engineering discipline to NASA human spaceflight and lunar exploration programs. The customer changed. The standard did not. Human spaceflight and a return to the Moon are integration problems at a larger scale: vehicles, crews, ground systems, and the test campaign that has to prove the stack before anyone flies it. He carried the missile-program habit into that work. Requirements have to close. Interfaces have to be owned by someone. A test has to be designed so a pass is evidence and a failure is useful. That is the same method whether the article is a cruise missile or a spacecraft bound for lunar exploration.

At Kyon Dynamics he brings that government-contractor and military-program experience to ammunition, energetics, advanced materials, precision machining, autonomous defense, and mission-support systems. The products are different from a Tomahawk. The path is not. A licensed round, an energetic, a machined article, or an autonomous system still has to move from a prototype to something a military customer can inspect, test, and qualify. He puts integration and test, verification and validation, and flight-test rigor on that path, and he builds the operating architecture a regulated program needs so the technical record can survive a prime or a government review.

Bio coming soon

Javier Valdivieso is Chief Executive Officer and Founder of ADM Works / ADM Aero in Santa Ana, California, and the designated Insider Threat Program Senior Official. ADM Aero is the manufacturing arm of Kyon Dynamics.

He founded ADM Works in March 2003. Over two decades he has built design, engineering, and manufacturing capabilities, and he brings more than 40 years of digital manufacturing experience. He is responsible for sales, technical support, and facility leadership, from concept through finished product.

The facility is at 1343 East Wilshire Ave, Santa Ana, CA 92705. Core work includes precision machining and CNC, soft tooling, production composites, tooling, fabrication, prep and paint, aerospace components, drone and UAS airframes, and mobile medical unit manufacturing.

Nicholas Peck is a United States Marine Corps veteran and entrepreneur who has served as Chief Executive Officer of iR8 Tactical since 2022. He leads the company’s direction across ammunition, tactical manufacturing, training, armored vehicle work, and research and development with partner firms Kyon Dynamics and Deus Vult.

Peck served six years in the Marine Corps. His first duty station was Washington, D.C. He then reported to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, where he served with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines and completed his enlistment with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. He completed two combat tours.

He served as an 0351 Infantry Assaultman, the Marine Corps MOS built around demolitions, breaching, and shoulder-fired assault weapons. Assaultmen were the infantry battalion’s demolition and anti-armor specialists: they employed the Mk153 SMAW against bunkers, armor, and fortified positions; built and initiated explosive charges; used detonation cord and electric and non-electric firing systems; and applied mechanical and explosive breaching, including systems such as APOBS, to open lanes for rifle squads. Peck’s expertise remains in multiple weapon systems, firearms, and explosives, from service rifles and crew-served guns to demolition charges and the platforms that carry them.

He also holds tactical, antiterrorism, and active-shooter training. That instruction covers threat recognition, site security, immediate action under attack, and the coordination required when an incident moves from the range or classroom into a real environment.

After the Marine Corps, he moved into entrepreneurship and, in 2022, took the helm of iR8 Tactical. As CEO he sets strategy, builds the team, and oversees the work the company actually delivers: ammunition manufacturing and readiness support, tactical training, armored vehicle and armor-upgrade programs, government and commercial contracting, and the financial and operational decisions that keep those lines moving. He stays close to product and technical development rather than treating the CEO role as desk work only.

He also works in R&D with Kyon Dynamics, an iR8 sister company focused on licensed manufacturing, ammunition and energetics, precision machining, and autonomous defense concepts, and with Deus Vult on mountable weapon technology for DAS gear, helicopters, and drones.

Zach Newkirk is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and protective-operations professional who serves as Chief Operating Officer of iR8 Tactical. He runs the company’s special-operations teams for dignitary protection of government officials.

His core work is antiterrorism assessment: site and route survey, venue analysis, threat picture, and closing security gaps before a principal arrives. As a contractor he has worked presidential-support missions and operated alongside the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and other federal and local law-enforcement agencies.

He is current on U.S. military service weapons and pistols, including the M17 and M18 Modular Handgun System and residual M9; the M4/M4A1, Marine M27 IAR, Mk18, and Army 6.8mm M7; crew-served systems such as the M249, M240B/L, M2HB, Mk19, M320/M203, and M134/GAU-17; and precision arms including the M110 family, Mk22 ASR, M2010, and M107-class .50.

He previously served as VP of Operations at Black River Security Solutions, running executive-protection work, corporate contracts, and team training. As COO of iR8 he owns day-to-day operations for protection and tactical teams: selection, training, assignment, advance work, motorcade and venue packages, communications and medical, weapons and ammunition readiness, and liaison with partner agencies. He coordinates that work with manufacturing, training, compliance, and the rest of the officer bench so a government protection mission is a company function, not a one-off.

Jared Stubbs is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and defense-industry executive with more than two decades of experience leading companies that serve military, maritime, and national-security customers. He brings deep operational and commercial expertise in firearms, ammunition, and weapons systems, with a focus on manufacturing, distribution, and complex government programs.

His career includes support to U.S. Navy Special Warfare and Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) through Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) training, as well as at-sea test and evaluation programs. He has been awarded and performed work supporting the U.S. Navy, MARSOC, the U.S. Coast Guard, DARPA, the Department of Homeland Security, and major defense contractors including Leidos, SAIC, and Lockheed Martin.

Mr. Stubbs has directed weapons and ammunition manufacturing operations, production planning, quality and compliance, and the development of specialized systems for U.S. production. He has also overseen federal contracting, international procurement, and multi-market sales across defense and maritime enterprises.

The international side of that work is a relationship business with a rule attached to it. Stubbs has sold and procured across defense and maritime markets outside a single domestic customer, dealing with foreign end users, partner companies, and the U.S. primes that sit between a manufacturer and an overseas requirement. Those relationships cover firearms, ammunition, and weapons systems: what a customer needs, what can be built in the United States, and how a purchase, a teaming arrangement, or a supply line is written so it can actually close. A conversation with a foreign navy, a maritime operator, or an overseas distributor is not the same conversation as a domestic contract. He has run both.

ITAR sits in the middle of those relationships. Firearms, ammunition, weapons systems, and the technical data that describes them are defense articles. Moving any of them to a foreign person, a foreign company, or across a border is an export, whether the shipment is a finished weapon, a component bought overseas, or a drawing sent so a partner can quote the work. Stubbs's operating role has been to keep international procurement and multi-market sales inside that line: who may receive technical data, what has to be licensed before hardware or know-how moves, and which conversations stay in a controlled channel instead of a sales call. International business in this trade is not a catalog sent abroad. It is a controlled transaction.

At iR8 Tactical he applies that record to manufacturing and to the commercial path around it. U.S. production, quality, and compliance are the base. Federal programs and the special-operations, maritime, and agency customers he has already served are one market. International procurement and foreign sales are the other, and they move only when the ITAR question is answered first. His job as Co-Chief Operating Officer is to hold those together: the plant, the government customer, and the overseas relationship, on one compliance record.

Lewis “Jimmy” Carroll is a U.S. Army veteran, firearms manufacturer, and engineer who serves as Chief Operating Officer of ADM Aero. ADM Aero, in Santa Ana, is the manufacturing arm of Kyon Dynamics. The work is precision machining and CNC, composites, tooling, fabrication, aerospace components, and drone and unmanned airframes.

Carroll knows avionics and airframes, and he reads schematics. His technical skills are mechanical as well as electrical: troubleshooting, design work, and the ability to follow a fault from the drawing to the part. As chief operating officer he uses that on the floor, so the sequence, the tooling, and the article that leaves the shop match what the print calls for.

He is a current Federal Firearms License holder, Type 07 manufacturer, and he came up through ammunition, service weapons, and weapons-development programs for military, NATO-aligned, and commercial markets. After Army service he founded and supported ventures in the tactical and manufacturing space. That operating habit is what he brings to an aerospace shop: compliance, product direction, and a finish standard that has to survive inspection.

His technical background treats a weapon, and now an airframe, as a complete system. On ammunition that has meant NATO-standard and U.S. service cartridges across infantry, crew-served, vehicle, and aviation roles, and the practical differences among ball, tracer, armor-piercing, linked, and boxed loads. On weapons it has meant the systems those rounds feed, from sidearms and carbines to crew-served guns and precision rifles, including mounts, recoil, feed, and fire-control interfaces. The same systems view now covers airframe structure, avionics, and the mechanical path from a schematic to a built article.

As Chief Operating Officer of ADM Aero he owns day-to-day operations: people, process, delivery, and the coordination required to keep an aerospace company executing. Design work and troubleshooting stay on his desk. A drawing that cannot be built, or a fault that cannot be isolated, does not leave the shop as someone else's problem.

Ryan Peck is a United States Air Force Security Forces veteran who serves as Chief Marketing Officer of iR8 Tactical. He previously served as Vice President of Operations for iR8 Tactical and as Chief Operating Officer and Facility Security Officer of ADM Aero. He holds an active Top Secret / SCI clearance.

As a Security Forces Defender, Peck was trained to protect installations, people, and mission-critical assets. That pipeline covers law enforcement and integrated defense, weapons qualification, patrol and entry-control operations, force protection, and antiterrorism. It also includes the close-in work Defenders are expected to do when a threat is already inside the wire: active-shooter response, close-quarters battle, building and room clearing, coordinated team entry, shoot/no-shoot judgment, and casualty care under fire.

His training includes breaching and tactical entry, mechanical and team-based methods used to open a door, hold a hallway, and clear a structure without losing control of the fight. Active-shooter and close-quarters work in Security Forces is repeated under stress: sector coverage, communication, threat identification, and the shift from open-ground movement into confined spaces.

After the Air Force, Peck moved into operations leadership. As Vice President of Operations for iR8 Tactical, he was responsible for turning company plans into daily output: scheduling, production flow, training support, and the practical problems of running a tactical manufacturing and readiness business. As Chief Operating Officer of ADM Aero he owned day-to-day aerospace operations, people, process, and delivery. As Facility Security Officer there, he was the on-site authority for the classified program: personnel and facility security, clearance management, visitor control, and safeguarding of classified and controlled information.

Those skills transfer directly to iR8. As Chief Marketing Officer he is not describing a product from a brochure. He has run the floor, the training line, and the security environment the company sells into. The message, the customer conversation, and the market position stay tied to what iR8 can manufacture, train, and deliver for military, law-enforcement, and government customers.

Steve Roeder is a U.S. Army veteran and entrepreneur who serves as Chief Compliance Officer of iR8 Tactical. After the Army, he built and supported several businesses in the tactical and manufacturing space before taking on compliance, product direction, and operational readiness at iR8 Tactical.

He works across ammunition, service weapons, and weapons development for military, NATO-aligned, and commercial customers. That includes common U.S. and NATO cartridges and the systems that fire them, from sidearms and carbines to machine guns, grenade launchers, and precision rifles, treated as a complete system of ammunition, mounts, feed, and platform integration.

Roeder is a certified explosives-laden driver, holding a 609 credential and additional HAZMAT certifications for moving energetic materials and other regulated loads. As Chief Compliance Officer, he keeps company work inside the rules for production, transfer, transport, and delivery. He is currently in R&D with Deus Vult on mountable weapon technology for DAS gear, helicopters, and drones, with an emphasis on practical, fieldable hardware rather than display pieces.

Timothy Hower is a United States Marine Corps veteran whose career sits at the intersection of small-arms manufacturing, metal fabrication, and commercial ammunition production. A master gunsmith, he is proficient across most weapon platforms and brings practical troubleshooting expertise to both the production floor and end-user applications, diagnosing reliability issues, refining processes, and translating field problems into manufacturable fixes.

His background extends beyond the bench. Hower has experience in weapon-system implementation, security and systems integration, and is a qualified unmanned aircraft operator, combining hands-on technical skill with operational and systems-level perspective.

David Gibson is Chief Legal Officer of iR8 Tactical, a United States Marine Corps veteran, and a California Highway Patrol officer with more than three decades of combined service in aviation ordnance, fire control, law enforcement, and multi-agency operations.

He spent 12 years in the Marine Corps as an aviation ordnance technician and Quality Assurance Representative, with deep experience on F/A-18 aircraft weapon systems and the full range of conventional air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions those aircraft carry: organizational-level maintenance, arming and de-arming, loading and downloading, fault isolation on fire-control and stores-management systems, and certification of weapons and suspension equipment before flight. Gibson's aircraft was the Hornet.

After the Corps he served more than 20 years with the CHP, including Joint Task Force assignments with multiple agencies, and was recognized for a Medal of Valor rescue in Crestline, California.

As a Quality Assurance Representative he inspected and certified completed maintenance and flight readiness of aircraft weapons systems, launchers, and suspension equipment, and he held the technical background to troubleshoot fire-control faults from schematics and technical manuals. On the F/A-18 that work covered the nose-mounted M61 Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon and its feed and ammunition system; wingtip and underwing missile rails for the AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM, and on earlier Hornets the AIM-7 Sparrow; air-to-ground stores including the AGM-65 Maverick, AGM-88 HARM, AGM-84 Harpoon, SLAM-ER, and AGM-154 JSOW; and the bomb family the jet actually delivers, Mk 80-series general-purpose bombs, Paveway laser-guided bombs, JDAM, and cluster munitions, on BRU racks and LAU launchers across the wing and fuselage stations.

Fire-control work sat alongside the ordnance. He worked the radar, stores-management system, armament control panels, and pilot displays that select, arm, and release those weapons, plus targeting-pod integration used for laser designation and precision delivery. Day-to-day that meant loading and unloading conventional and electrically primed ordnance, gun loading, launcher and rack inspection, chaff and flare countermeasure systems, corrosion control, inventory and accountability, and the ground checks required before an aircraft was signed safe for flight.

Not available at this time due to ongoing operations.

Trenton T. Young is a technology and infrastructure executive with more than 30 years of leadership experience building, scaling, and managing organizations responsible for complex technology networks and mission-critical infrastructure. His career spans telecommunications, network engineering and construction, program management, technology distribution, and electric vehicle infrastructure, with extensive experience turning technical capabilities into scalable commercial operations.

Before Sentinel SwarmGuard, Young served as Chief Operating Officer of YKTG, where he helped scale the organization from a startup into a company generating more than $125 million in annual revenue. He directed corporate strategy, operations, sales, business development, financial management, and large-scale technology deployments while managing budgets exceeding $100 million. That work covered telecommunications infrastructure, central office systems, wireless networks, outside-plant fiber construction, technology distribution, value-added reseller operations, and EV charging infrastructure.

Throughout his executive career, Young has specialized in bringing together technology, people, capital, strategic partners, and operational processes to execute complex programs at scale. He has negotiated multimillion-dollar contracts, established strategic relationships with major technology companies, developed high-performing executive and project management teams, and negotiated and executed multiple joint ventures to expand organizational capabilities and market reach.

Before YKTG, Young held senior leadership positions with TCoombs & Associates, BMMJ Network Services, and KMC Telecom. At BMMJ Network Services, he helped drive 200 percent revenue growth, managed profit-and-loss responsibility and budgets for projects exceeding $5 million, and directed cross-functional engineering, sales, and operational teams.

At KMC Telecom, Young held senior leadership responsibility for major telecommunications infrastructure programs, including construction and engineering for a $1.7 billion network of approximately 1,700 miles of fiber across 37 metropolitan markets. He led a 40-member organization responsible for large-scale infrastructure deployment and directed disaster-recovery efforts to restore metropolitan networks affected by Hurricane Ivan.

As Chief Executive Officer of Sentinel SwarmGuard, Young brings that record of executive leadership, infrastructure deployment, technology commercialization, financial management, strategic partnerships, and large-scale program execution to the company's growth. His focus is building Sentinel SwarmGuard into a scalable technology organization capable of moving advanced solutions from concept and demonstration into commercially deployable systems for government, enterprise, infrastructure, and other mission-critical environments.

His leadership standard is disciplined execution: assembling the right technical and business partners, establishing repeatable operational processes, maintaining financial accountability, and building organizations that can deliver sophisticated technology reliably and at scale.

His professional development includes Project Management Essentials certification through the Project Management Institute, technical management coursework at DeVry Institute of Technology, and training through the U.S. Army Quartermaster School.

Daniel Jimenez is Chief Operating Officer of Sentinel SwarmGuard Inc., where he oversees operations, training, field execution, and the compliance posture required to support military, governmental, and contractor customers. A retired California Highway Patrol officer and United States Marine Corps veteran, he brings more than 30 years of combined experience in law enforcement, tactical training, aviation weapons systems, and regulated defense operations, including CMMC.

Over a 25-year career with the CHP, he investigated crimes and Vehicle Code violations, handled evidence, made arrests, and testified in court. He is certified in patrol rifle, handgun, shotgun, Taser, chemical agents, impact weapons, arrest and control, emergency and tactical driving, active shooter response, and high-risk warrant service, including close-quarter tactics and room clearing. He also serves as an Opposition Force team member supporting the training and certification of special operations teams, using realistic tactics, communications, weapons, and drones to challenge team movements.

He served in the Marine Corps as an Aviation Ordnance Technician on AH-1W SuperCobra and UH-1N Huey aircraft. His work centered on the fire-control and weapons systems that make those aircraft combat-ready: the M197 20mm turreted cannon, Hydra 70 and 5-inch Zuni rockets, AGM-114 Hellfire, BGM-71 TOW, AIM-9 Sidewinder, AGM-122 Sidearm, the Helmet Sight Subsystem, Telescopic Sight Unit, Night Targeting System with laser rangefinder/designator, and AN/ALE-39/47 countermeasure systems. He maintained, repaired, tested, boresighted, and certified those systems, served as a Quality Assurance Inspector, supervised ordnance operations on overseas deployment, and previously held a Secret security clearance. At Sentinel SwarmGuard he applies that technical, operational, and CMMC experience to counter-swarm and counter-UAS work, government and commercial contractor relationships, and the operating architecture required to create, protect, and realize enterprise value.

Kim Kuhle is National CEO of Peck General Construction. She is a community-development financier and builder of veteran housing and small-business campuses, brought in to run Peck as a national contractor rather than a single-market shop.

She spent two decades as a community-development finance banker, structuring and blending commercial real-estate packages totaling about $1 billion. She was a U.S. Bank community-affairs officer with outstanding ratings across the regions she managed, and she later served as President and CEO of Capital Consulting. That work sits at the intersection of banks, tax credits, Opportunity Zones, and brick-and-mortar projects that have to close, not just get announced.

She co-founded and served as treasurer of Midwest Housing Development Fund, a CDFI that grew from a $1,000 start into a multi-state loan pool that helped finance thousands of affordable apartments. She was personally liable on that fund and on later senior and multifamily funds. As a property and development manager she handled about 100 acres of land, acquisitions, an award-winning healthcare clinic, office buildings, and economic-development programs across three states.

Kuhle is founder and CEO of Veterans Victory Housing and Small Business Centers, live-work campuses for veterans moving into business ownership. Public projects include Opportunity Zone work in Omaha and a mixed-use campus that broke ground in Colorado Springs. The work honors her father, Don Kuhle, an Air Force veteran and commercial developer. She is the third generation in a family that built shopping centers, neighborhoods, and commercial property.

She is a University of Nebraska graduate with advanced work in economics, political science, and public administration, and she holds credentials in economic development, New Markets Tax Credits, fundraising, and program evaluation. She has served on nonprofit boards for more than twenty years, including NeighborWorks and Rotary.

At Peck General Construction she is the national chief executive. Peck is a veteran-owned, full-service contractor—design-build, commercial and institutional work, government construction, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, and residential and ADU work—registered for federal work (CAGE 9V6W3, UEI RCP3Y3WGKV21). Her job is to take that field company and run it at national scale: capital, bonding, multi-state work, government and commercial pursuits, and the finance structure that lets a job start and finish. She does not replace the superintendent. She owns the company-level work that decides which markets Peck enters, how those jobs are funded, and whether the contractor can carry them.

Jesse Casillas is CEO of Operations for Peck General Construction. He is a general contractor with more than 40 years in the field, and he owns how Peck actually builds: crews, schedule, safety, and the work from demolition through final punch.

His career covers the full range of heavy and building construction. He has overseen demolition and site teardown, major commercial work, bridge and overpass development, road construction, and custom homes up to 15,000 square feet. Across that span he has been responsible for thousands of projects, not as a visitor on a job, but as the person who has to make the sequence hold when dirt, steel, traffic, weather, and inspectors all hit at once.

At Peck he is the operations chief. National strategy and finance sit with the rest of the officer bench. Casillas runs the floor: which superintendent owns the job, how demolition hands off to foundation and structure, how civil and building trades stay on the same schedule, and whether a commercial building, a road, a bridge package, or a large custom home is staffed and supplied to finish. He sets field standards, coordinates equipment and subcontractors, and keeps the company’s self-perform trades—concrete, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, and general building—working as one contractor instead of a pile of separate tickets.

He is actively involved in state procurement and federal construction. Peck is a veteran-owned contractor registered for government work. Casillas works the operational half of that lane: walk-downs, estimates that can be built, means and methods, prevailing-wage and safety posture, and the field execution that has to survive a state or federal inspection. He is the reason an awarded package becomes a finished project instead of a claim.

Bio coming soon

Ben Smith is Chief Revenue Officer of Peck General Construction. He is responsible for revenue, strategic partnerships, and taking the company’s name into more than one market. Peck General Construction is a veteran-owned, full-service contractor. Smith’s job is the commercial half of that company: who the work comes from, which relationships produce the next job, and whether the brand holds up when Peck walks into a new city.

He holds a degree in business and communications from the University of Utah. He is fully fluent in Spanish and uses that in client work, not as a line on a résumé. Owners, lenders, and partners who would rather do business in Spanish deal with him directly.

Smith came to Peck General Construction with 25 years total in the industry. Of that career, 15 years were as top producer. He was the top-producing residential and construction finance executive at Deseret First Credit Union for 15 consecutive years, and across the full 25 years he closed more than $1 billion in loans. That is not a general banking résumé. The book was houses and construction: the loans that fund a build, the borrowers who have to finish what they start, and the credit decisions that sit between a set of plans and a job that can actually break ground.

Heavy construction lending is the part of that record that transfers. A contractor does not get paid the way a retailer does. Revenue depends on awarded work, the capital to carry it, and a lender or a partner who believes the company can perform. The 15 years as top producer were spent on the credit-union side of those conversations, inside a 25-year career in the industry. He knows how a construction loan is sized, what a lender looks for in the contractor, and why a relationship fails when the story and the numbers do not match.

At Peck General Construction he puts that together with the communications side of the job. Revenue is not a slogan. It is partnerships, pursuits, and a company that can be explained the same way to an owner, a lender, and a public agency. The financial record is the billion dollars he already closed. The operating job is to turn that judgment into work Peck General Construction can win and carry.

Rick Notarianni is Chief Compliance Officer at Peck General Construction, a veteran-owned, full-service contractor based in Hesperia, California. He brings more than 30 years in construction to the role, most of it spent where the work is hardest to fake: on the ground, checking whether extremely large projects actually meet the standard.

Before joining Peck, he worked as a state inspector on hospitals, schools, and other major projects across California. School work was a core part of that career. He inspected every aspect of safety and compliance on large K-12 and institutional projects, structural systems, life safety, accessibility, fire and egress, materials, and whether the building going up matched the approved plans. The projects were not small renovations. They were major school construction jobs, the kind of work held to California's strictest public-building rules, where a missed detail becomes a life-safety problem or a failed inspection. That meant continuous oversight from the field through closeout, not a paper review from an office.

That background is what he carries into compliance at Peck. He has spent decades watching how large projects succeed or fail on coordination, documentation, and whether the work in the field matches the requirement. Hospitals, schools, and other massive builds trained him to treat safety and code compliance as the job, not a checklist added at the end.

He played college football after a high school career in which he won two state championships and earned All-League honors. He later coached at Oak Hills High School in Hesperia, where his teams won multiple championships, including years spent developing offensive linemen. His son, Johnny Notarianni, came through that program, earned Mojave River League Lineman of the Year in 2025, and signed with San Jose State.

He lives in the High Desert with his wife Mandy, a two-time All-American softball player at Azusa Pacific, and their family. The through-line in his career is the same one he used on those school projects: accountability, preparation, and doing the work correctly the first time.

David Richardson is Chief Executive Officer of GWB Trading Inc. Born and raised in Southern California, he is the son of a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran. He played baseball, football, martial arts, track, and boxing, graduated Oceanside High School in 1981, and studied business and economics at Long Beach City College and California State University. An early NFL tryout ended after a head-on collision with a drunk driver.

He returned to Southern California, did close-protection work for entertainers, and went back into banking at Union Bank and in the savings-and-loan business, where Charles Keating became a mentor. After the savings-and-loan collapse he moved to Arizona, opened nightclubs and restaurants, managed championship boxers, and ran an exotic-car rental. International banking then took him abroad. He spent more than forty years building relationships he still uses.

GWB Trading Inc. works rare earths, industrial and battery minerals, aluminum, lithium, and related feedstock, with the purpose of moving offtake to the United States.

Accomplishments. He built a forty-year international banking network that GWB uses with ministries, state-owned producers, funds, and U.S. offtakers. He moved the company into a critical-minerals house on rare earths, lithium, aluminum, and companion minerals, and placed GWB in mine-to-market deals through acquisitions, fund raises, mineral-rights negotiation, and government-to-government brokerage.

Responsibilities as CEO. He directs the mineral book and which positions GWB takes. He leads acquisitions of smaller mining, trading, logistics, and processing companies. He leads capital formation with hedge funds, commodity desks, and family offices. He leads negotiation of mining and mineral rights, royalties, streaming, volume, tenor, and the path from pit or brine field to port. He serves as the bilateral critical-minerals intermediary between producing governments and U.S. industrial and defense demand, with the commercial close meant to land in an American plant. He maintains the relationships that let GWB introduce a ministry to a fund, a junior miner to a U.S. offtaker, and a finished parcel of mineral to domestic industry.

Leandro Silvas is Chief Operating Officer of GWB Trading Inc., where he helps lead the company's operations, strategic development, relationship building, and execution across its global mining, commodities, and corporate ventures.

Silvas brings nearly two decades of leadership experience spanning organizational management, community development, public-sector operations, board governance, business development, and strategic partnerships. Throughout his career, he has built a reputation for bringing people together, developing strong working relationships, and moving complex initiatives from discussion to execution.

In his role as COO of GWB Trading, Silvas works alongside Chief Executive Officer David Richardson and the company's executive leadership team to support the development and execution of domestic and international opportunities involving critical minerals, mining, commodities, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. His responsibilities include coordinating opportunities across stakeholders, assisting with operational strategy, developing key relationships, supporting negotiations, and helping ensure that projects remain aligned as they progress from opportunity through execution.

Silvas brings extensive experience leading teams and managing organizations where accountability, communication, financial stewardship, and operational execution are essential. His leadership background includes directing personnel and facilities, overseeing programs and large-scale events, developing policies and procedures, managing budgets and resources, and working closely with executive leadership, governing bodies, community organizations, and outside partners.

In addition to his operational leadership, Silvas has extensive board and nonprofit experience and has served in executive leadership positions focused on philanthropy, community investment, youth development, and organizational governance. These roles have strengthened his ability to evaluate opportunities from both a business and community perspective while navigating multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.

At GWB Trading, Silvas applies that experience to an increasingly important mission: strengthening the relationships, infrastructure, and commercial pathways necessary to move critical and strategic materials through reliable supply chains and into U.S. industrial markets. GWB's work spans global mining, commodities, and corporate ventures, with a particular focus on developing opportunities that connect international resources with American industrial and strategic demand.

Silvas approaches leadership with a relationship-first philosophy built around trust, accountability, follow-through, and long-term value creation. Whether working with business leaders, investors, government representatives, community organizations, or strategic partners, his focus remains the same: bring the right people together, build the structure necessary to execute, and turn opportunities into sustainable results.

Sam Lam is Chief Financial Officer of GWB Trading at the head corporate office. He is responsible for financial strategy, capital, budgets, forecasts, investment analysis, and the financial performance of the company, including all acquisition properties.

He carries the corporate financial responsibility for the smelting and processing plants, mines, rare-commodity book, and properties GWB owns or acquires, including cost, capital spending, inventory value, environmental and closure reserves, and consolidated reporting.

He works with the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Compliance Officer, and the Chief of Staff on mining negotiations and on the company's other operations. In those negotiations he handles valuation, pricing, financing, due diligence, and the financial terms. He puts the pricing, bonding, working capital, contract margin, and audited reporting in place so GWB can supply precious and critical minerals to United States government and defense customers.

Acquisitions of mines, plants, buildings, and other properties run through his office for valuation, financing, due diligence, and closing. Cash, risk, hedges, controls, tax, and financial reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and the board remain with him.

Jeffrey Diehl is a U.S. Navy veteran and Inland Empire entrepreneur whose career has moved from classified Cold War submarine support to critical-minerals work now aimed at U.S. government and defense supply chains.

He enlisted in the Navy and served as a data-processing technician aboard the submarine tender USS Holland (AS-32). After loading at a naval weapons station, the ship headed toward the Azores, then docked at Holy Loch, Scotland, relieving USS Canopus, with a floating dry dock astern. For several years he helped refit nuclear ballistic-missile submarines. Holding a secret clearance, he processed data on missile movements and warhead loads as boats prepared for deterrent patrols. He was honorably discharged and used the GI Bill to attend college.

That early work put him inside the logistics of strategic weapons, shipyard refit, and controlled materials, experience that now frames his role in minerals the United States treats as national-security commodities.

In 1996 he underwent a 6½-hour operation to remove two brain tumors. The surgery destroyed his pituitary gland. Determined to take charge of his health, he researched nutritional products and in 1999 founded Nitro2Go Inc. in Highland, California. The company began with high-dose vitamin energy-formula packets, added energy drinks in 2003, and later launched the 2-ounce Instant Energy shot. By early 2008 the shot had already sold more than half a million units, 7-Eleven carried the line nationwide, and the business had grown from a single office into a full building plus warehouse. He also worked to place the brand with military and special-operations customers.

As a boy in Riverside he sold paperback books door-to-door from a red wagon. He later published a newspaper and ran a radio station. With his wife he hosted an annual Christmas toy festival for underprivileged children in San Bernardino and regularly supported about 30 charities.

Diehl has said he failed more times than he succeeded and that overnight success is a myth. The constant in his story is the same work ethic he first practiced in the Navy, then applied to college, recovery from surgery, and building a company from a Highland warehouse.

He now serves as Chief Compliance Officer of GWB Trading Inc., a firm focused on rare materials, mining, and acquisitions. The company partners with foreign governments to move critical minerals into the United States for government use. Aluminum-lithium and related strategic materials sit at the center of that work: they are lightweight, high-strength inputs used in aerospace and defense platforms, and they sit inside the same industrial base the Pentagon is trying to rebuild at home.

Diehl is currently helping stand up three aluminum-lithium facilities in Texas and Missouri, part of an effort to shorten overseas dependence and put processing capacity on U.S. soil. The sailor who once tracked missiles and warheads under a secret clearance is now working the commercial and government side of the materials those systems still require.

Bio coming soon

Fong Tse is a strategic executive and business operator serving as Chief of Staff and Strategic Development at GWB Trading Inc., where he works directly with company leadership on corporate strategy, business development, strategic partnerships, M&A, organizational development, and the execution of growth initiatives.

His career spans private enterprise, investment, corporate development, portfolio-company leadership, government, and complex institutional operations. He brings a distinctive combination of transaction experience, entrepreneurial operating experience, executive advisory capability, and more than two decades of experience navigating high-stakes organizations, negotiations, regulatory environments, and competing stakeholder interests.

As Director of M&A at Gemelli Capital Trust, Tse has been involved in business incubation, acquisitions, capital formation, and the development of operating companies across emerging and strategic industries. His work has included evaluating investment opportunities, developing commercial relationships, supporting acquisitions, assisting with capital formation, and helping portfolio companies establish the management, operational, and strategic infrastructure necessary for growth.

His portfolio-company experience includes executive leadership involving carbon reduction and carbon-conversion technologies, hydrogen and fuel-cell applications, advanced carbon materials, manufacturing and distribution, and other emerging commercial ventures. Through these roles, he has worked across the lifecycle of developing enterprises, from identifying opportunities and structuring relationships to building management teams, developing strategic partnerships, supporting commercialization, and creating pathways toward enterprise value.

At GWB Trading, Tse applies this experience to the company's focus on international resources, strategic commodities, industrial supply chains, and corporate ventures. His responsibilities encompass strategic planning, opportunity development, executive coordination, relationship management, transaction support, organizational development, and the advancement of initiatives that connect GWB's resources and relationships with commercial and industrial opportunities.

A central part of his role is helping translate opportunities into executable strategies. This includes assessing potential partners and transactions, coordinating internal and external stakeholders, identifying operational requirements, developing decision frameworks, and helping leadership move strategic initiatives from concept to implementation.

Before entering private enterprise and investment, Tse spent more than two decades in progressively senior executive roles within large public institutions, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. His responsibilities involved advising senior executives, managers, legal counsel, and organizational stakeholders on complex operational, regulatory, workforce, risk, and organizational matters involving an institution of more than 18,000 employees.

He served as a chief negotiator across multiple labor organizations and bargaining units and participated in complex negotiations involving executives, government stakeholders, legal counsel, employee representatives, and other institutional interests. He also advised leadership during significant organizational transitions, consolidations, and changes involving public-safety organizations and government operations.

That experience shaped a leadership approach centered on strategic judgment, discretion, negotiation, stakeholder alignment, and execution. Tse is accustomed to entering complex situations, identifying the issues that matter most, understanding the interests of the parties involved, creating alignment among decision-makers, and developing practical paths forward.

His experience across M&A, investment, entrepreneurship, operating-company leadership, negotiations, organizational transformation, and executive advisory work provides GWB with a perspective that bridges strategic opportunity and practical execution.

At GWB Trading, Tse's focus is on helping the company identify and develop high-value opportunities, strengthen strategic relationships, support transactions and partnerships, and build the organizational capabilities necessary for sustainable enterprise growth.

AC Caswell, Male Ally of the Year Award Recipient 2024, former NFL Oakland Raider, and Founder and CEO of Million Dollar Mingle, Future Pro Sports Agency, and L Luxury Magazine, built his career on a simple standard: rise above adversity, and take people with you. From South Central Los Angeles to professional football, sports representation, media, and entrepreneurship, he has used every platform he built to open doors that were closed to him. Deidre Peete-Caswell, Chief Operating Officer of Nitro2Go, is the operating partner who turns that standard into product, process, and scale. Together they lead as a pair: public advocacy and brand vision on one side, formulation discipline and day-to-day execution on the other.

Empowering leadership. AC uses Million Dollar Mingle and L Luxury Magazine to put women entrepreneurs in front of decision-makers, sponsors, and capital. He does not only host those rooms. He shows up for women-led events, stays in the work, and treats access as something to be used, not displayed. Deidre matches that with the operating strength behind it: product integrity, supplier and formulation standards, launch discipline, and the systems that keep a growing brand honest. Their shared leadership is built on access, accountability, and results.

Philanthropic initiatives. Million Dollar Mingle, founded by AC, raises funds for nonprofits focused on chronic conditions, including childhood cancer, and for lesser-known causes that rarely get the spotlight. The organization regularly works with the Rise and Dream Foundation and the Mechelle Cares Foundation, giving visibility and practical support to programs that serve women and children. That charitable platform now sits alongside Nitro2Go, so business growth and community giving move on the same calendar.

Community mentorship. AC continues to support the Boys & Girls Clubs and AIM (Athletes International Ministry), mentoring young people from the communities that shaped him. The work is practical: access, example, and a clear path. Young women in particular see a leadership model that does not treat opportunity as a closed room. Deidre extends that commitment into the brand itself, building a product company young people can see as a place to learn operations, formulation, and market work, not only a logo.

Nitro2Go energy products. As CEO and COO of Nitro2Go, they are building the next major energy brand around a direct trade. The category has long run on high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, synthetic sweeteners, and stimulant stacks that spike and crash. Nitro2Go is being formulated the other way. The line is built on an organic, body-and-mind formula: clean botanical caffeine sources for steady alertness, a B-vitamin complex to support energy metabolism, electrolytes for hydration, and adaptogenic botanicals for focus and recovery. The sugar load, artificial dyes, and crash ingredients common in conventional energy drinks are left out. The aim is sustained energy for training, work, and daily life, not a short hit followed by a drop. AC sets the brand and market vision. Deidre runs how that formula is developed, produced, and brought to market.

The standard. AC's public standard, shaped in part by mentors such as Al Davis, is to be big, bold, and successful, and to ask what the work is actually for. He talks openly about doubt and how he moved through it. Deidre matches that public example with operating rigor. Together they are building Nitro2Go as proof that a consumer brand can perform and still put the body and mind first.

AC Caswell's recognition as Male Ally of the Year in 2024 reflects a record of advocacy, philanthropy, and platform-building for women in business. With Deidre Peete-Caswell as Chief Operating Officer, that same record is being carried into Nitro2Go: open the door, do the work, and leave the product and the people better than you found them.

AC Caswell, Male Ally of the Year Award Recipient 2024, former NFL Oakland Raider, and Founder and CEO of Million Dollar Mingle, Future Pro Sports Agency, and L Luxury Magazine, built his career on a simple standard: rise above adversity, and take people with you. From South Central Los Angeles to professional football, sports representation, media, and entrepreneurship, he has used every platform he built to open doors that were closed to him. Deidre Peete-Caswell, Chief Operating Officer of Nitro2Go, is the operating partner who turns that standard into product, process, and scale. Together they lead as a pair: public advocacy and brand vision on one side, formulation discipline and day-to-day execution on the other.

Empowering leadership. AC uses Million Dollar Mingle and L Luxury Magazine to put women entrepreneurs in front of decision-makers, sponsors, and capital. He does not only host those rooms. He shows up for women-led events, stays in the work, and treats access as something to be used, not displayed. Deidre matches that with the operating strength behind it: product integrity, supplier and formulation standards, launch discipline, and the systems that keep a growing brand honest. Their shared leadership is built on access, accountability, and results.

Philanthropic initiatives. Million Dollar Mingle, founded by AC, raises funds for nonprofits focused on chronic conditions, including childhood cancer, and for lesser-known causes that rarely get the spotlight. The organization regularly works with the Rise and Dream Foundation and the Mechelle Cares Foundation, giving visibility and practical support to programs that serve women and children. That charitable platform now sits alongside Nitro2Go, so business growth and community giving move on the same calendar.

Community mentorship. AC continues to support the Boys & Girls Clubs and AIM (Athletes International Ministry), mentoring young people from the communities that shaped him. The work is practical: access, example, and a clear path. Young women in particular see a leadership model that does not treat opportunity as a closed room. Deidre extends that commitment into the brand itself, building a product company young people can see as a place to learn operations, formulation, and market work, not only a logo.

Nitro2Go energy products. As CEO and COO of Nitro2Go, they are building the next major energy brand around a direct trade. The category has long run on high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, synthetic sweeteners, and stimulant stacks that spike and crash. Nitro2Go is being formulated the other way. The line is built on an organic, body-and-mind formula: clean botanical caffeine sources for steady alertness, a B-vitamin complex to support energy metabolism, electrolytes for hydration, and adaptogenic botanicals for focus and recovery. The sugar load, artificial dyes, and crash ingredients common in conventional energy drinks are left out. The aim is sustained energy for training, work, and daily life, not a short hit followed by a drop. AC sets the brand and market vision. Deidre runs how that formula is developed, produced, and brought to market.

The standard. AC's public standard, shaped in part by mentors such as Al Davis, is to be big, bold, and successful, and to ask what the work is actually for. He talks openly about doubt and how he moved through it. Deidre matches that public example with operating rigor. Together they are building Nitro2Go as proof that a consumer brand can perform and still put the body and mind first.

AC Caswell's recognition as Male Ally of the Year in 2024 reflects a record of advocacy, philanthropy, and platform-building for women in business. With Deidre Peete-Caswell as Chief Operating Officer, that same record is being carried into Nitro2Go: open the door, do the work, and leave the product and the people better than you found them.

Bio coming soon

Nolan Brammer is a former college football quarterback, All-American, football coach, and online fitness coach with a passion for helping people become stronger, healthier, and better versions of themselves.

Nolan played quarterback at Trinity International University, where he earned All-American honors and developed a deep appreciation for discipline, leadership, teamwork, and high-level performance.

For the past 8 years, Nolan has dedicated himself to coaching football, helping athletes develop not only on the field, but also in their mindset, confidence, work ethic, and character. He currently serves as the Head Football Coach at Big Bear High School, where he continues to mentor and develop the next generation of athletes and leaders.

Beyond football, Nolan is an online fitness coach committed to helping people pursue healthier, stronger, and more active lifestyles. Through his experience as an athlete and coach, he understands that true fitness is about more than just workouts. It is about building sustainable habits, developing confidence, and creating a mindset that carries into every area of life.

Now, Nolan is taking that vision to the next level through Nitro2Go.

His mission is to grow Nitro2Go into something much bigger than a fitness brand, to create a movement that inspires people around the world to prioritize their health, fitness, performance, and overall well-being in ways we haven't seen before.

Nitro2Go is built on one simple belief: your potential is greater than you think.

Nolan's vision is to bring together the power of athletics, coaching, fitness, and community to help people everywhere unlock that potential.

Train hard. Live healthy. Think bigger. Go Nitro.

Dr. Vaun Williams is CEO of WRATH and Chief Operating Officer of Vogue Recovery Centers in Arizona and Royal Life Centers in Arizona and Washington. She is a licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in psychology and more than 20 years of management experience in behavioral health.

She earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from Arizona State University in 2005, her master's degree from the University of Phoenix in 2011, and her doctorate from Capella University in 2017. Over two decades she has supervised a wide range of clinical professionals, including clinicians working toward independent licensure. Her clinical work covers anxiety, depression, addiction, mood disorders, trauma-related disorders, and personality disorders.

Dr. Williams practices from an integrative model. She draws on more than one therapeutic approach and shapes treatment around the person in front of her, not a fixed protocol. She treats the therapeutic relationship as the foundation of the work: a place of trust where clients can look at thoughts, feelings, and behavior without performance. The aim is practical. Build resilience, strengthen coping skills, and give people a clearer read on themselves so they can move through anxiety, depression, relationship strain, addiction, trauma, or the ordinary weight of daily life with more room to choose.

She also uses that clinical background to support accurate, current, medically reviewed content in behavioral health.

Outside of session and operations, she reads, spends time outdoors, and stays involved in community work. She looks forward to partnering with people on the path toward a steadier, more fulfilling life.

Bio coming soon