HONOREE
Daniel Czerwonka
General Counsel
Varda Space Industries
Georgetown University Law Center
In the last four years, Dan Czerwonka helped take the world's first drone unicorn (Zipline International with a current valuation of $2.8 billion) from approximately 20 employees to 700 on five continents.
He personally built the world's first commercial medical drone ports, equipped with state-of-the-tart medical and blood supply chain equipment in Rwanda in East Africa and Ghana in West Africa, racking up several other world-firsts along the way.
Czerwonka has worked directly with regulators and legislatures in multiple countries to enable commercial drone delivery at national scales, and procured several more world-firsts, including permissions to fly commercial drones long range and beyond visual line of sight, over urban areas, to transport medical lab samples, hazardous pathogens, and vaccines, and more.
Interestingly, Czerwonka was directly responsible for procuring permission from the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority to transport the world's first COVID-19 lab samples by drone from thousands of citizens across the country to its two national testing labs, located within the country’s two most populous cities, which also required integration with Air Traffic Control and two major international airports, thereby reducing test result turn-around by two to three days and enabling the country to contain the spread of COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic. He was also responsible for procuring the first long range commercial drone flight permissions in the U.S. from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in order to transport cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment to Novant Health’s Hospitals in North Carolina.
In 2021, Czerwonka joined Varda Space Industries as general counsel for the latest "new space" start-up from Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund focused on in-orbit manufacturing. Varda secured $14 million in seed funding and closed a $42 million Series A round last year co-led by Khosla Ventures and Caffeinated Capital. Czerwonka currently manages the company’s legal and regulatory affairs, including working with NASA and the Air Force, as well as procuring permissions from the FCC, NOAA and FAA.
PRIVATE COMPANY: 1-100 EMPLOYEES FINALISTS
Gavin G. Galimi
Chief Legal Officer
Stratagem
Investments, LLC
USC Gould School of Law
Gavin Galimi is a versatile, curious, and empathetic leader and board member with experience from start-up to public companies. He currently serves as chief legal officer for Stratagem Investments, a boutique private equity firm he co-founded in 2017 to focus on solving society’s inequities, including health equity and access disparities.
Galimi has been instrumental in closing nearly $2 billion in transactions and investments over the last two years. He currently serves as chief legal officer for Stratagem Investments, a boutique private equity firm he co-founded in 2017, which focuses on investing to solve society’s inequities, including health equity and access disparities. Most recently, he was instrumental in expanding COVID-19 testing capacity across Los Angeles County during the January 2022 surge with mobile CLIA high complexity laboratories. Galimi’s investments span many sectors including fintech, cleantech, biotech, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods.
Thomas James Greig Scott
Chief Legal Officer
Tools for Humanity
Corp. (Worldcoin)
Stanford Law School
Thomas James Greig Scott helps grow companies developing innovative technology to advance human well-being, and is especially passionate about promoting participatory, inclusive, and decentralized governance models; and combating illicit financial flows.
Today, Scott is the chief legal officer of Tools for Humanity Corp., a company pursuing the ambitious goal of promoting financial inclusion by using a biometric device to distribute its Worldcoin cryptocurrency fairly to billions of people. Since joining the company as its first legal hire in early 2021, Scott has helped lead multiple funding rounds that have carried the company to a $1 billion valuation and built a legal team now comprised of five people, charged with navigating the complex, evolving and sometimes intersecting areas of virtual currency and data privacy regulation in several countries. His team has leveraged automations to handle upwards of 1,200 agreements and supported the needs of the Worldcoin team.
Robert (Rob) Solomon
Chief Development and Legal Officer
BLT Enterprises
UC Berkeley School of Law
Over the past 12 years as chief development and legal officer with BLT Enterprises, Rob Solomon has been an integral team member in the growth of BLT’s real estate portfolio and has worked on over $1 billion in transactions. BLT Enterprises is a multi-faceted real estate development and investment company with an exceptional track record of success in industrial and commercial real estate. The firm has developed or acquired more than $2 billion in assets to date.
In his role, Solomon touches nearly all aspects of acquisitions, dispositions, lease negotiations, financing, and development, leveraging his expertise to navigate the complex regulatory environment in Los Angeles and other Southern California markets. He stepped into a new leadership role after BLT’s beloved founder and president, Bernie Huberman, passed away in 2021. Huberman’s priority was to provide his team with the tools they need for success, and Solomon has continued Huberman’s legacy.
