Shahin Samadi

Co-founder and President

Dr. Samadi has over 20 years of extensive experience in managing technology organizations, including all different phases of software and system engineering lifecycles of complex, industrial-strength information and data-processing systems. Prior to forming Innovim, Dr. Samadi was the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Merkle Data Technologies.

His business unit was responsible for application development, integration, deployment, and operation of custom solutions for a wide array of commercial and non-profit businesses across North America. Merkle is a $100M privately held company and a leading firm specializing in Database Marketing and CRM solutions and services. Prior to Merkle, he served as Vice President of Engineering for a streaming media company, Vodium and a senior managment role for BNA where Dr. Samadi was responsible for setting up the technology and infrastructure that allowed BNA to migrate from a paper-based content provider to an internet-enabled vendor of electronic news and information. Prior to BNA, he served as NASA Technical Director for the Earth Observing Satellite missions, where he was responsible for management, design, deployment and operation of mission-critical systems. He also founded, ran, and sold a privately held boutique-engineering firm, SAK Technologies. Dr. Samadi serves as adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, teaching Software Engineering, System Design, and Management of Information Systems. He has presented and published many technical papers in the area of software and systems engineering. Dr. Samadi has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University.

Neal Most

Vice President of Operations

Mr. Most has 20 years of experience in applications and systems development. Over the course of his career, Mr. Most has spent significant time as a programmer, technical project manager and team lead. Mr. Most has led teams through all aspects of full lifecycle software development. Mr. Most has served at a senior level in many organizations, focusing on developing product for clients and markets and managing those product development activities.

He has served in a variety of diverse roles such as client acquisition, product management, customer relations, and partnership development.

Mr. Most started his career at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY. In their fledgling digital technologies department he served in many roles, from C/C++ Programmer to Technical Sales and Project Manager. Upon relocating to the Washington D.C. area in the mid-90s, Mr. Most took a position with Claritas, Inc., a leading provider of marketing data and analytics. There he led a team involved with porting the company flagship desktop product 'Compass', from DOS to the Windows environment. Mr. Most was responsible for requirements discovery, specification, development, QA, release and maintenance. Upon product release, his time was split between client support and designing & developing new Java-based products for the Internet. Mr. Most's next position was with Merkle, developing marketing databases for clients. His tenure here found him fulfilling familiar roles such as Project Manager, Architect and Relationship Manager, while also honing his database design and administration knowledge. Now at Innovim, he brings a breadth of technical, managerial and CRM experience to his clients. Mr. Most has been Project/Program Manager of the NASA Applied Sciences Invasive Species Forecasting System, an enterprise systems development project jointly being developed by NASA & USGS, with a national focus and multiple federal agency customers.

Now at Innovim, he brings a breadth of technical, managerial and CRM experience to his clients. Mr. Most has been Project/Program Manager of the NASA Applied Sciences Invasive Species Forecasting System, an enterprise systems development project jointly being developed by NASA & USGS, with a national focus and multiple federal agency customers.

Steve Kiger

Vice President of Finance

Mr. Kiger has over 30 years of experience in technology and financial management roles, including over 16 years in financial planning and analysis primarily in the telecommunications, software development, and defense and civilian federal contracting industries.

Prior to his work at Innovim, Mr. Kiger served as Sr. Finance Director for Unisys Corp. for its Enterprise Computing and Network Services Center (ECNS) in Reston, VA, an organization that provides all data center, network operations, and security operations services to major federal clients. He managed all financial activities for ECNS, including financial planning and analysis, budget development, reporting, billing, forecasting, cost accounting, cost analysis and control, capital planning, asset management, procurement, compliance and cost disclosure for government contracts, strategic planning, financial systems improvement, and proposal preparation and business development support.

Mr. Kiger has also served as CFO, Washington Operations, for Teledyne Brown Engineering (TBE). TBE partners with other federal contractors to co-manage the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction programs that eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Russia and other former Soviet Union states. Earlier he served as Finance Director in a successful turnaround role at RewardsPlus, a national provider of employee benefits plan enrollment and administration services to over 100 Fortune 500 corporations. Prior to RewardsPlus, he started his financial planning, analysis, and management career at AT&T where, among other accomplishments, he helped develop a $5B global digital communications satellite system. Later, as parent companies spun off new organizations, he was promoted and transferred from AT&T to Lucent Technologies as Finance Manager for a start-up software development enterprise that received buyout offers of up to $100M, and then to Avaya Inc. as Financial Planning and Analysis Manager for its Federal Government Sales division. Mr. Kiger holds a BS degree in Electrical/Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and later earned his MBA from the University of California at Davis with emphases in Technology Management, Management Science, and Finance.

Kellye Sheehan

Vice President of Business Development

As Vice President of Business Development for Innovim, Ms. Sheehan leads our new business efforts including marketing, branding, company and partner relationships, business development, proposals, and strategic planning.

Ms. Sheehan has 29 years of industry experience with technology firms, and brings prior experience in both P&L management and business development. She has successfully managed staff ranging from 5 to 110 employees. She has personally managed client budgets under contract up to $60M, and as part of a management team up to $400M; and has led new business pursuits ranging in size up to $2B.

Ms. Sheehan's professional experience includes serving as Vice President of Client Services/COO for E-Management; and Program Director and New Business Director for BAE Systems. She has also served as a Division Director and Capture Manager for Indus Corporation, as an Account Sales Executive for Impact Innovations, and as a Senior Program Manager and Capture Manager for Lockheed Martin for domestic and international programs. She has worked with a variety of Federal customers including DOE, DOT, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA, NRO, NGA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Sheehan held software and systems engineering positions at Scientific and Engineering Software; Intermetrics; and Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp (MCC). Her areas of technical specialty included compiler and language design, satellite ground stations, GIS, and systems development.

Ms. Sheehan graduated Magna cum Laude from Texas A&M University's College of Engineering in Computer Science, minoring in Electrical Engineering. She completed her Master's degree work at the University of Texas at Austin in Computational Linguistics. She is a graduate of Lockheed Martin's leadership, management, and executive training programs. She is a certified Earned Value Manager, has been trained in PMI, and has led corporate ISO and CMMI initiatives.

Ms. Sheehan is active in Women in Technology of Washington, DC and currently serves as Chair of the Executive Women's Committee. She is also listed in the Metropolitan Business Who's Who for Washington, DC.

Richard Sikorski

Director of Earth Sciences

Dr. Sikorski has over 15 years experience in program management, systems engineering, remote sensing systems development, and remote sensing science and operations support. He has served in providing leadership and technical expertise in customer-facing engineering and software development systems and in multi-agency emerging technology operational and research projects.

In management areas, his expertise includes Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMI PMP PBMOK), Earned Value Management, Six Sigma process, systems engineering, software development, data processing systems design, performance, reliability, and usability testing, quality assurance, life cycle costing, technical baseline assessment, and risk management and mitigation. In technical areas, his expertise includes modeling and simulation, multivariate analyses, sensor design and quality monitoring, operational and research sensor algorithm development, sensor error budgeting, algorithm development and error correction. He remains engaged with the operational, technical, and research communities, with strong professional relationships established with the DoD, DoC, NASA, and industry customers and contractors.

Dr. Sikorski earned his Ph.D. in 1983 at the University of Miami. He has led MODIS and VIIRS instrument calibration, validation, and algorithm development at the University of Miami and at Raytheon, 1983 through 2002. Since 2002, he has led NPOESS and NPP calibration and validation, including systems engineering and development of Calibration-Validation processing systems, at Raytheon and Innovim.

Mary Hunter

Director of Systems Engineering

Ms. Hunter has 20 years experience in systems engineering, satellite ground control systems development, and flight operations support. She has expertise in ground control centers of spacecraft satellites, computer application development and integration, system security, system deployment and maintenance as well as formulating technical solutions and managing both engineering and software development projects. Ms. Hunter's experience includes work on multiple Earth Observing missions, including TRMM (a joint mission between NASA and Japan), LandSat 7 (NASA and USGS), EOS (TERRA, AQUA and AURA) and NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) a joint mission between NASA, NOAA and DoD. Prior to joining Innovim, she worked with SGT, CSC and Allied Signal Aerospace.

Ms. Hunter received her Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. She has her Masters in Computer Science from the John's Hopkins University, Baltimore MD.

Ashok Saxena

Executive Vice President

Mr. Saxena is an innovator in technology and business. These traits have enabled him to succeed as a serial entrepreneur. He:

• Founded and operated INFORMATICS, an aerospace company, for a period of 11 years. The company designed and fabricated hardware, developed ground and flight software. Clients included NASA, NOAA, DoD, IBM and General Motors.
• Founded and operated SigmaNet Network Corporation, a web applications and infrastructure company that was acquired by a public company at a handsome return on investment for the venture capitalists who had invested in the company.
• Co-founded and provided the initial funding to One97 Communications, a telecom company that develops and operates applications and associated infrastructure for cellular communications. Now funded by Intel Capital, the company provides voice, SMS and WAP services to 250 million users that perform over 2.5 billion transactions every month.

Mr. Saxena held Director level and higher positions in 3 public companies performing Program and Capture Management roles. His systems engineering and management experience includes civilian, DoD, Intelligence and commercial satellite programs, unmanned aerial systems, water launched and conventional launch vehicles and submarines; software development on various platforms from embedded microprocessors to mainframes, telecom services deployed on global fiber networks to wireless communications.

Recently, as PM of a $500M contract, Mr. Saxena led the design and installation of anti-terrorism and Force Protection systems. Using transformational technology, these netcentric systems, installed at pathfinder Air Force bases, form the cornerstone architecture of the next generation of warfighter security systems. Working with the representatives of various branches of the forces, he lead efforts that defined and tested standardized protocols by which the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps will exchange information such as that for the Common Operating Picture.

Mr. Saxena authored several papers on Navigation, Guidance and Control and co-authored a book that served as the standard reference book in space agencies around the world. He served on the national technical committee for computer systems of the AIAA and on the IT Transition committee for Gov. O’ Malley. He received the President’s award for Program Management at Fairchild Space Company. His work on anti-terrorism led to the state requesting him to author a white paper on how to make Maryland safer for its citizens.He was invited to serve as a panelist by the National Press Club.

Mr. Saxena holds a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech. He completed all PhD courses at Virginia Tech and took graduate courses in Electrical Engineering at MIT.

Sammy Samadi

Co-founder and Managing Member

Ms. Samadi has over 15 years of extensive experience as a marketing executive working for highly successful organizations. Prior to forming INNOVIM, Ms. Samadi did the strategic marketing for Pepco and was a Senior Director of Sales and Marketing for BEC. During that period she implemented and oversaw all different phases of sales, marketing and product development. Previously, she held various senior positions in small to mid size companies. Ms. Samadi has a BA and MS in Business from Johns Hopkins University.