I am a company builder and business leader who is passionate about mission-driven organizations. Throughout my career in technology, I have been focused on bringing new products to market and leading companies to global growth. My approach to business is to stay grounded in clear, direct, and honest communication and lead teams who have deep expertise in their field.

Evolv’s clear sense of purpose and one-of-a-kind weapons-detection technology made it an easy decision to join the company. At Evolv, I have the chance to work with a talented, dedicated and mission-driven team whose singular focus is to deliver technology and capability that saves lives. This is both a privilege and a calling.

Ever since I can remember, I got excited about building new things. When I was 12, it was go-carts. My focus changed to cars through my more formative years (that one hasn’t gone away yet). After getting a physics degree from Colgate University, I got into the business side of high tech. I still love building new things, but truly enjoy working with a great team that’s applying advanced technology to solve hard problems.

Some things have to be believed to be seen! I’ve spent the last 20+ years in startup environments, where everyone has a chance to contribute to a common vision, puts both hands on an oar and pulls in the same direction. There’s nothing more exciting or satisfying than seeing a “eureka moment” transformed into a living, working thing that actually fulfills the original vision.

For twenty years, I have been at the intersection of technology and business. I’ve focused on the business need, pain point or strategy, then utilized technology to help realize the opportunity. As a management consultant, I’ve done this with global companies in the United States and Europe, and at software companies, I’ve helped global customers in different industries use software to improve their competitive position.

Now, I’m humbled by the opportunity to apply sensors, software and data to help make the world a safer place. I’m focused on bringing a collaborative approach to our customers, our team and an ecosystem of innovators to achieve our mission. Software may be eating the world, but sensors will make it safer.

As a father of five, Evolv’s mission of creating a safer world really speaks to me. I’m thrilled to be able to help the Evolv team fulfill its mission while also positioning the company for financial success. I’m a well-seasoned CFO with significant startup experience, having served with eight public and private technology companies over the last 20 years, five of them as CFO. Throughout my career, I have focused on building world-class teams as I’ve developed deep expertise in corporate finance, business administration, and management for entities ranging from early-stage to international public companies. I look forward to bringing my experience to Evolv as together we work to balance effective security and a positive visitor experience. I am a Massachusetts native; I love that Evolv is a company with local roots making a big impact on a global market.

Pyenson is a veteran technology industry lawyer and management executive with broad private and public company experience, including managing multiple initial public offerings (IPOs) and strategic transactions, as well as building respected in-house legal teams. He joins Evolv as general counsel from VMware Carbon Black, where he served as vice president and general counsel of the Carbon Black Security Business Unit following VMware’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Carbon Black in 2019. Previously, as Carbon Black’s general counsel and a member of the executive team, he helped lead its $175 million IPO in 2018. He also served in a similar role with A123 Systems, which had one of the most successful IPOs in the clean technology sector. Notably, he has significant international and security experience serving the U.S. government on counterterrorism matters earlier in his career.

As a child my father owned a roofing business and from the ages of 13 – 21 he had me on the job. Every summer and winter vacation, I was helping run his business and leading his work crews.  The values, humility, and hard work he instilled in me as a young man continue to drive my fundamental values. When I graduated college, I took what I learned about people and hard work to NYC and began my professional sales career.  I quickly realized that startups were my passion. Building businesses from a vision, with similarly passionate people, and having them potentially grow into global organizations and brand names had become my focus. Building and leading teams gives me the ability to give back to all those that have given so much to me in my life and career. How fortunate I have been to work and learn from so many. Being able to align this passion with a truly meaningful mission, is what has brought me to Evolv.

Evolv’s mission to make the world a safer place through frontier remote sensing and AI technology creates the perfect alignment of a company being able to do well while also doing good for the world and humanity.  It really doesn’t get much better than this.

I learned all the important stuff from LEGOs. Before joining Evolv, I was fortunate enough to receive my PhD under the guidance of David R. Smith at Duke University, considered one of the founders of metamaterials research. I’ve come to appreciate metamaterials as a general set of rules for designing electromagnetic building blocks from scratch.

At Evolv, I’ve been able to build off this foundation in electromagnetics, working to develop novel numeric and analytic tools to complement the many diverse aspects of our physical security systems. It is through these tools that I am able to really impact the next generation of physical security devices, since, in the end, the difference between the complex and the routine is just having the right building blocks.

From investment banking to consulting to nonprofit management, the common thread woven throughout my career has been people. Attracting, engaging and working with talented people is the one constant that has kept me coming back for more.

I’m so excited to be able to play a role in shaping the future of Evolv. From defining roles to identifying the very best people to fill them, I love what we are doing to build a strong corporate culture here at Evolv. Together, our team is working to make the world a safer place, and there isn’t much that’s more rewarding than that.

I am a high-energy product creation leader with a proven track record of delivering exceptional business outcomes. I have 25 years of experience in product development, including 12 years at the VP level, where I managed mixed discipline, multi-site, cross-cultural teams ranging in size from 25 to 250+ people. I thrive in fast-paced, high growth, team-centered environments where innovation, creativity, and execution excellence are valued. I am driven by a passion for developing high-quality products and building world-class engineering teams.

Evolv’s unique ability to prevent threats from reaching their targets by using advanced sensors and AI software to detect weapons and explosives drew me to the company. I’m excited to help Evolv continue to scale and deliver on its broader vision of a comprehensive security platform that incorporates active shooter detection into the larger smart city ecosystem.

I have spent most of my career journey working on, and with, some of the world’s most impactful products, solutions, and organizations.  This has spanned the range from highly engineered complex products like aircraft engines, life sciences drug discovery instruments, internet of things (IoT) and AI applications.  In these roles I have had the opportunity to internalize the business problem, iterate solution approaches, select the right technology, and successfully bring these offerings to market.  I am humbled and thrilled to do the same at Evolv.

The Evolv team, mission, technology, and opportunity are second to none. This of course is all channeled with a laser focus of realizing the mission of making the world a safer place. In the words of Henry Ford, “Vision without execution is just hallucination.” As a father, husband, son, friend, and member of our world community, participating in this endeavor matters and is what gets me up in the morning.

I am a veteran, hands-on executive and board member with over 25 years of experience working with technology companies. My areas of expertise include category creation, marketing and winning against incumbents, and operational growth.

I have helped build companies that have successfully created new multi-billion-dollar disruptive technologies and share the same passion as the other Evolv Board and Advisors for applying technology to help solve important challenges. Most recently, I was a Board Member and Chief Commercial Officer at Illumio, where I led the company’s go-to-market and customer engagement lifecycle organizations, including marketing, support, people, and IT.

I have spent my entire career working with great founders. Early on, my focus was scaling revenue for early-stage software companies. As those companies grew and went public, I rose with them to lead sales or the entire company. Now I get to work with entrepreneurs as a co-founder of General Catalyst, but my playbook is similar.

Before co-founding General Catalyst, I led Allaire Corporation from 1997 to 2000 as president, CEO and member of the Board of Directors. During my tenure, Allaire grew from a venture-backed start-up to a $119M public corporation trading on the NASDAQ.

I work best with great product founders, like ones at Evolv Technology, who are looking for a trustworthy partner to help them scale up revenue, further become strong operators, and build a high-growth company. I still love to see teams come together, forge bonds of trust and commitment, and then go out and change the world with high integrity.

My journey started in Karachi and has taken me through small towns in Ohio to Boston and now Palo Alto. After finishing my Ph.D. at MIT I became an entrepreneur by co-founding an advanced materials company, and then a venture investor. As an investor, I have worked with entrepreneurs ranging from those who are barely in college to those with Nobel prizes. The excitement and challenges remain the same. And entrepreneurs choose to bring me on as a partner because I have been in their shoes before, and I help them navigate through the unknowns before it starts to feel like an overnight success.

Entrepreneurs I back are best described as missionaries, not mercenaries. They are rebels in their own mind, imagining and then building the world they want to live in. It is an honor to work alongside great teams that dare to solve society’s biggest challenges and have no fear. Evolv’s team represents the best of them. Evolv’s mission is to protect people around the world by harnessing the potential of new hardware, software, and data-centric technologies. We, unfortunately, live in a world with people willing to go to any length to harm innocent people. Evolv gives me hope they won’t succeed and goodness will always eventually prevail.

Bio Coming Soon

I’ve spent the last 15 years working to make our nation more secure and resilient. As Massachusetts’ Homeland Security chief and then Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, I managed the response to crises as varied as the H1N1 virus and the BP Oil Spill and issues as far-ranging as immigration reform to interoperability. Again and again, I’ve learned that at the end of the day, a safe homeland is one where ordinary citizens like you and I are informed and prepared and engaged.

Resilience is about managing risks, and adapting to change with evolving ideas and new technologies. But innovation is just a buzzword until you hit the pavement with thoughtful products that engage the realities of the modern security space. I’m excited and proud to be part of a team working to protect people and places across the world.

As a leader at the Central Intelligence Agency and then the New York City Police Department soon after 9/11, I have had the honor of being surrounded with men and women dedicated to protecting America’s national security interests and the security of Americans at home and abroad. At each step of the way during these nearly 50 years in the intelligence and law enforcement communities, it was the mission, the team and the people I worked with that defined what was accomplished.

Evolv embodies these same qualities. A mission to provide security and safety to as many people as possible via the creative application of new technologies. A team spirit that ignites the imagination and creativity needed to find, develop and apply new technologies to the mission at hand. And an assemblage of people who thrive on rising to technological challenges that are tied to protecting people from those who would do them harm.

Since March 2015, I have served as President of my alma mater, Anderson University. Prior to that, I was Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration for 4 ½ years, where I worked with a great team to help transform the TSA from a one-size-fits-all agency to a risk-based, intelligence-driven agency focused on its core national security mission of keeping air travelers safe.

For nearly 27 years prior to TSA, I was an FBI agent. After 9/11, I led the Counterterrorism Division and later was put in charge of all national security matters for the FBI. As Deputy Director, I helped transform the FBI into the national security agency it is today. My passion, whether in government or now in academia, is to inspire and empower people to do their absolute best in transforming, adding value and making a difference in the lives of others.

One of my passions is to build and lead companies that enable individuals to experience the life we deserve through technology. My background in secure identity solutions, biometrics technology, and air traffic control systems provide me a unique perspective in driving this mission.

My interest in secure identity solutions began after 9/11 when I was asked what I thought about individuals getting on planes with fake IDs. As Raytheon’s Vice President Air Traffic Control at the time, I felt the impact firsthand. It became clear to me that future tragedies could be prevented by integrated biometric and identification technology.

As current CEO and Board Member of Aware, Inc I am excited to continue to drive product commercialization, customer engagement strategy and company execution as I previously had at IDEMIA and MorphoTrust. I am thrilled to work together with the Evolv team to address this global active shooter and terrorist movement through smart technology without making people choose between their experience or compromised safety.

I spent over 20 years at the FBI directing active shooter/workplace violence risk mitigation for the Bureau’s corporate programming and private sector partnerships. I also served as the FBI’s New York Tactical Training Program Manager and Firearms and Tactical Instructor, responsible for providing tactical readiness training across the country and around the globe.

Managing modern day targeted violence is challenging and complex. Today’s organizations want a solution-oriented approach to risk mitigation. I’m dedicated to empowering corporations and institutions through education and training to mitigate active threats often seen in the workplace, classrooms, and public spaces.

Today, as the Founder and Principal of the PerSec Academy & Advisory Group, I’m able to continue to serve and empower people providing guidance and expertise in active threat mitigation. This dedication led me to Evolv and its team of professionals working together on a mission to protect people.