George W. Hinckley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Biography
Shortly after graduation from high school, Mr. George Hinckley enlisted in the Marine Corps and was subsequently commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant upon graduation from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. He graduated from Naval Postgraduate School with a Master of Science in Systems Engineering (Electronic Warfare). Primary military occupational specialties in the Marine Corps were Signals Intelligence / Electronic Warfare.
Following retirement from Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Virginia, he joined Vitro Corporation as a Group Supervisor then Program Manager supporting Army Intelligence / Communications Programs. After four years with Vitro Corporation, Mr. Hinckley spent nine years with BRTRC Inc. as Program Manager then Vice President supporting acquisition programs at Marine Corps Systems Command as well as Science and Technology development at the Office of Naval Research.
During the period 2005 to 2011, he worked with MTCSC Inc. as Senior Advisor and Director of the Center for Technology (C4T) where he helped establish and support the Department of Defense Cyber Security Range. In August 2011, Mr. Hinckley established Associates in Business, Engineering & Technology Inc. that provided business development, engineering design, and technology transition services that included the launch of “MOS to Degree” working with Northern Virginia Community College and Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps toward professionalizing C4 and INTEL workforce.
In July 2013, Mr. Hinckley Co-Founded and was a Managing Partner of Yyotta, LLC constructing a Tier 3 Data Center at Quantico Corporate Center. Currently, he serves as Co-Founder and CEO, Crossroads Innovation Group, LLC.
Khalil Yazdi, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Dr. Yazdi is an entrepreneurial executive and seasoned higher education Chief Information Officer with a history of success at the campus, system, and national levels. He has a proven track record of constructive engagement with the global research and education community. As an economist, Dr. Yazdi has a keen interest in building public-private partnerships that bring academic researchers, scholars and innovators together with for-profit companies and state/regional economic development agencies to promote economic growth and workforce development.
Dr. Yazdi has a practiced understanding of the challenges for research support, building research supporting service portfolios, and designing reliable and cost-effective technology solutions. In addition to over three decades as a CIO at several higher education institutions, Dr. Yazdi was instrumental in the incubation, launch and expansion of the Internet2 NET+ Services Program, with focus on matching cloud providers to community needs. While at Internet2, he was instrumental in forging community-based contracts with major cloud providers and played a lead role in obtaining accommodations for data egress waivers, standard reporting of provider security capabilities, the regulatory obligations of research institutions and negotiated preferential pricing.
In addition to his work as an independent strategic advisor to colleges and universities and technology companies serving the research and education space, Dr. Yazdi founded the Open Research Cloud Alliance (ORCA) and serves as it inaugural chairperson. Dr. Yazdi holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Houston.
Dr. Yazdi is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Crossroads Innovation Group.
Craig Lee, Chief Scientist
Dr. Craig A. Lee has had a 32-year career at the Aerospace Corporation culminating as a Senior Scientist in the Engineering and Technology Group. He has worked in high-performance parallel and distributed computing this entire time. This led to Dr. Lee’s involvement in the Open Grid Forum (OGF) where he served as President from 2007 to 2010 and later as Vice-Chair of the Open Research Cloud Alliance. Dr. Lee served as the main liaison between OGF and the DMTF, SNIA, TMF, the Open Cloud Consortium, Cloud Security Alliance, OMG, and OASIS.
Dr. Lee is now on the OGF Board of Directors and heavily involved with NIST, having contributed significantly to the NIST Cloud Standards Roadmap and supporting the NIST Cloud Technology Roadmap. He is currently serving as the chair of the NIST Cloud Federation Working Group. He has served on the program committee for many conferences and workshops, as a panelist for the NSF, NASA, DOE, and as an international evaluator for INRIA. He was on the editorial boards of Future Generation Computing Systems (Elsevier, 2004-2019) and the International Journal of Cloud Computing (Inderscience).
Dr. Lee has published over 85 technical works, including four book chapters and seven edited volumes and issues. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine (1988).
Dr. Lee is Managing Director, Federation Partners (KeyVoms.org) and serves as Chief Scientist at Crossroads Innovation Group, LLC.