David Rothzeid

Vice President

2021 - Current

At Shield I currently source deal flow, perform due diligence (market, customer, financials, etc.), set valuation, negotiate term-sheets, and support the best in class start-ups & entrepreneurs in order to build the next generation of frontier technology to meet the challenges of tomorrow across both the commercial and national security sector

Board Member

2024

Board Observer

2022

Board Observer

2022

Staff Officer

2021

I am currently an IMA reservist for SAF/AQX, Acquisition Integration supporting development and execution of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and Management Initiatives

ABMS Program Element Monitor (PEM)

2019 - 2021

Director of Acquisition Pathways

2018 - 2019

Leading the Pathways team of four incredible acquisition professionals to design and continuously improve all facets of DIUx’s business processes to effectively, efficiently, and legally do business with best-of-breed commercial innovators. As leaders of innovative defense acquisition, our model will influence and shape the way the Department does business. We are hacking the defense acquisition system.

Pathways Manager

2016 - 2018

Member of Pathways team at DIUx. We specialize in developing acquisition strategy across our portfolios. Our responsibilities include providing contracting expertise to all prototype projects going to innovative companies on behalf of DIUx's customers. Additionally, we develop repeatable and scalable frameworks for leveraging Other Transaction Authority (OTA). Finally, we provide training and understanding to proliferate better business acumen across government and industry.

Executive Officer

2015 - 2016

As the Executive Officer I provided and oversaw the operational and administrative needs of a 200+ member division. Acting as a 'chief of staff' to the Division Colonel, I lead strategic division policy to enable the advancement of our nation's most sensitive classified programs with an execution budget of over $500MM. Weekly activities entailed leading staff meetings for the division on program status updates and all personnel matters. Additionally, I interfaced with external stakeholders to provide access to our Senior Materiel Leader and manage the front office operations for a five member team.

Senior Program Manager

2012 - 2015

Lead Program Manager for the Kill-Chain Integration Branch, Special Programs Division, overseeing highly classified programs within the Department of Defense portfolio. Some of my projects included: Leading a multi-service (Air Force, Navy, Army) team in the development and deployment of a multi-level security Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation (TCRI) infrastructure. This two year effort aimed at providing the services an ability to transfer data rapidly and create a flexible and extendible software migration capability to both fuse and exfiltrate data to denied environments. While leading this effort the team had an operating budget of $45MM in Fiscal Year 2015 and focused on developing the technology as well as determining transition opportunities for future viability. Lead program manager for a 5 year $65MM modeling, simulation and integration contract vehicle that specialized in future weapon development at the premier Virtual Warfare Center (VWC), operated by Boeing. My activities primary activities were to lead multiple integrated product team meetings and the execution of the follow-on contract with estimated value of $85MM. While the program manager I led a team of six to bolster our stakeholder base to include additional Air Force equities in order to guide major acquisition decisions worth up to $5BB over the DoD's Future Year Defense Plan (FYDP) budget.

Project Manager

2008 - 2012

Lead highly technical teams to deliver a diverse set of capabilities to the war-fighter. I have managed budgets as large as $7.2M and as small as $120K. Projects have ranged from literature searches to complete system overhauls. My main focus throughout these projects has been managing stakeholder expectations while ensuring the project team adheres to budget and schedule constraints along with managing risk.

GHOST

2013 - 2014

Selected for a highly competitive deployment opportunity to work as a project manager for Special Operations Command inside the Fixed-Wing, Program Execution Office. While there I competed a $26M contract in one month to provide Intelligence to a foreign government and oversaw obligations and expenditures on a $500M fleet of King-Air Beach Aircraft adapted for military missions. Furthermore, I forward deployed to Bagram Air Base where I managed and oversaw 200 separate air vehicles, both manned and unmanned for penetrating military capabilities.

Team Manager

2010 - 2012

For four seasons I managed an adult intramural soccer team. This required strong communication skills and utilized the ability to juggle a bevy of personalitlies who had various aspirations for their twilight sports ambitions.