A multidisciplinary team of materials scientists, roboticists and software engineers.

In that role he led staff supporting an $825 billion Space, Global Power/Reach and Information Dominance portfolio, and oversaw the training, organising and equipping of some 8,000 contracting professionals executing programs worth more than $65 billion annually. He previously commanded the Air Force Installation Contracting Agency at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

General Blake entered the Air Force in 1984 through the ROTC program at The Citadel. He has served as an information management officer, Air Force mission director on a NATO fighter wing, warranted procuring contracting officer for major defense acquisition programs, and contracts chief at both an air logistics center and a product center. He commanded contracting squadrons at base and major command levels, served as a deputy mission support group commander and Defense Contract Management Agency commander, deployed as a contingency contracting officer for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and served as Senior Contracting Official–Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.

He is a joint qualified officer, having served at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds a BA in history from The Citadel and an MBA in management from Golden Gate University.

He served as president of CEMEX USA from 2011 to 2015 and as an advisor into 2016. Earlier roles include President of Rinker Materials West, Chief Executive of Rinker Australia, and Vice President of Rinker Florida Materials. He was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Summit Materials, and President of the Cement & Southwest Ready Mix division at Martin Marietta.

He is a past Chairman of the National Ready Mix Concrete Association and the Florida Concrete and Products Association, and past Vice Chairman of the Portland Cement Association. He has served on the executive committees of the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association and Cement, Concrete & Aggregates Australia.

He holds a BS in Business Administration from Palm Beach Atlantic University, an MBA from Rice University, and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

He is chairman of the board of Xilinx and a director of Parade Technologies. Previously he was CEO of Tabula, a programmable logic company that brought a series of industry firsts to market, including a 3D programmable architecture and a five-billion-transistor chip on Intel's 22nm TriGate process.

Before Tabula he was president, CEO and director of Matrix Semiconductor, which pioneered three-dimensional integrated circuits and was acquired by SanDisk in 2006. Earlier, as senior vice president and general manager of the FPGA product groups at Xilinx, he oversaw the Virtex family of field-programmable gate arrays and grew the high-end FPGA division from $300M to over $1.4B. He was elected to the Xilinx board in 2000.

A graduate of Texas A&M University, he serves on its College of Engineering Advisory Board and received an Outstanding Alumni Award in 2008.

As Vice President of Government Affairs at American Defense International, she helped defense technology companies including SpaceX, Palantir, Shield AI and Epirus navigate Department of Defense procurement, securing millions of dollars through appropriations.

Before that she served as the youngest Chief of Staff to a Congressman on the Defense Subcommittee of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, advising on national security issues and working to strengthen the innovation ecosystem within the Department of Defense.

As the first acquisition director for a DoD component focused on AI delivery, he was responsible for ensuring acquisition pathways served the JAIC mission of providing AI capabilities to the warfighter and the DoD workforce, across projects with an annual budget of around $300M. He led work on intellectual property and responsible AI in contracting, working with bodies including the World Economic Forum, and led a DoD AI acquisition literacy effort with OUSD (A&S) and Defense Acquisition University.

Previously he was a Contracting Officer for the Innovation Advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force, working on policy and modernised strategies for the acquisition of services. He received his law degree from Stetson University College of Law and joined the ABA and Florida Bar in 2011.

He is Senior Managing Director of Investment Analytics and Research at Transwestern, directing research and advanced data analytics to guide real estate investment strategy for the firm and its clients.

He co-founded Strongside Financial Group, aligning capital with Qualified Opportunity Zone businesses and property. Before that he spent five years at Lionstone Investments as VP and Head of Investment Strategy and Research, and fifteen years with Goldman Sachs/Archon Group as a VP managing business units including Global Real Estate Investment Research, Valuation and the Data Resource Group.

He holds the CRE, CCIM and MAI designations, is a Homer Hoyt Fellow and a licensed Texas real estate broker, and attended the University of North Texas for a BBA in Real Estate.