Advisory Board

Chair, Advisory Board
Former Enterprise Chief Technology Officer, CIA

Bob Flores

Former Chief Technology Officer of the CIA with an extensive background in search, intelligence and cybersecurity.

Bob has spent 31 years at the Central Intelligence Agency where he held various positions in the Directorate of Intelligence, Directorate of Support, and the Directorate of Operations. Ultimately, he retired as the CIA’s enterprise Chief Technology Officer. Over the years his career has included serving on a variety of inter-governmental committees along with applications programming, contract and project management, and both line and staff management roles at various levels of the CIA.

After retiring from the CIA, Bob founded several companies, including his most recent Applicology, to provide advice worldwide regarding cybersecurity risk assessments, cloud migration strategies, and technology due diligence. Bob is also a Senior Partner with OODA LLC, a global strategic advisory firm with deep DNA in global security, technology, and intelligence issues. Bob is an Advisor to several early-stage technology companies and is also a co-chair of the Cloud Security Alliance Software Defined Perimeter Working Group.

Bob holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Statistics from Virginia Tech.

Advisory Board Member
Former Chief of Search at Wells Fargo Bank

Kathlina (Kathy) Phillips

Former Chief of Search for Wells Fargo Bank with extensive experience in FinTech enterprise search.

Kathy spent over 25 years with Wells Fargo Bank working in the fields of systems engineering, systems architecture, and enterprise search. She ultimately retired from Wells Fargo as Chief of Search and VP of Systems Architecture. Over the years she has specialized in emerging technologies, enterprise architecture, and enterprise AI search.

Her enterprise search experience includes building a new search platform at Wells Fargo that handled billions of records across hundreds of separate internal applications, providing world-wide support and engineering team with 24×7 availability.

Kathy holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and a MS in Computer Information Systems from the University of Phoenix. She has published papers and presentations for emerging technologies and trends, various knowledge management topics, and design of dynamic data acquisition systems.

Merlin CISO / Member, Advisory Board
Former CIA Cyber and Cloud Architect

Daniel Cybulski

Former Cyber security and cloud architect for the CIA and currently senior FinTech security consultant.

Daniel Cybulski is on the Merlin Advisory Board and also serves as Chief Information Security Officer for Merlin Search Technologies, responsible for directing and supervising information security programs for the company. Dan brings over eighteen years experience designing, supporting and leading complex computing environments, with extensive experience building, deploying, securing and supporting operational technical infrastructures including, cloud, advanced analytics and complex heterogeneous High Performance Computing systems and high performance network and storage subsystems.

Dan received an MS in Information Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He then joined the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) where he spent over ten years focusing on cyber security and big cloud architecture, ultimately in the role as Technology Director. Dan then joined Cognitio Corp as Chief Technology Officer where he focused on architecting and implementing cloud computing environments, supporting customer cloud transition and hybrid cloud projects and cyber security.

Currently, Dan is the founder and CTO of Decisive Tek Consulting, LLC where he focuses on:

• Designing and implementing cloud computing environments supporting customer cloud transition and hybrid cloud projects:
• Assessing, designing and implementing secure systems and architectures both on premise and in commercial and federal cloud environments; and
• Leading the implementation of the NIST Cyber Security Framework and Risk Management Framework to meet federal cyber security standards.

Dan advises Merlin regarding security policy and practices, supervise security implementation and serves on Merlin’s Technology Governance Committee.

Advisory Board Member
CFA, Hedge Fund Manager, MIT Tech Advisor

Lucille (Luci) L. Braun

Chartered Financial Analyst and large scale money manager who has been mentoring MIT technology startups for over 15 years.

Luci Braun is a former money manager with The Capital Group, managing money for mutual and pension funds across the USA. During those years, her primary focus was the worldwide auto, truck, and related supplier markets, at one point her domain owned 10% of each of Ford and General Motors, before diversifying the portfolios into Asian and European OEMs and parts suppliers.

Following her work at The Capital Group, Luci worked in Manhattan at E.T.G., one of the early electronic trading companies, and was a partner in Patriot Advisory Group, a private hedge fund, using algorithmic trading for portfolio management.

Luci spent over 15 years as a mentor at MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), advising startups in financial, software and medical industries on business strategy, financings, and acquisitions. She was also a member of MIT’s Venture Outreach Program, advising economic development councils and other universities throughout the world. VMS has advised over 2,500 MIT entrepreneurs, with more than 1,000 ventures raising over one billion dollars at the seed level.

Luci has an MBA from Yale University, a B. Comm. and B. Sc. from the University of Calgary. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Chartered Accountant (CA), and held series 65, and 62 licenses. She is the gold medalist from the University of Calgary and the recipient of the 1st Alberta Heritage Trust Fund scholarship.

Advisory Board Member
Former Trial Partner, Prof. UF Law

William (Bill) Hamilton

Professor at the University of Florida Law School and Executive Director of the University of Florida E-Discovery Project and International Center for Information Retrieval.

William Hamilton is a Senior Legal Skills Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and Executive Director of the University of Florida E-Discovery Project and International Center for Information Retrieval. Mr. Hamilton joined the law school faculty after 30-years as a trial lawyer with a commercial litigation practice at Holland & Knight and Quarles and Brady, where he served as National E-Discovery and Commercial Litigation Partner.

Professor Hamilton has taught electronic discovery at the University of Florida for the past decade and is the co-author of the LexisNexis Practice Guide Florida e-Discovery and Evidence and co-author of A Student Electronic Discovery Primer: An Essential Companion for Civil Procedure Courses. Professor Hamilton has also served as the General Editor of the LexisNexis Practice Guide: Florida Contract Litigation.

Mr. Hamilton is a Domain Name Neutral Arbitrator and mediator for the World Intellectual Property Organization (Geneva) and the author of over a hundred domain name dispute decisions. Professor Hamilton has been recognized in Chambers USA, Florida Legal Elite, Best Lawyers in America, and Florida Super Lawyers.

CFO and Member, Merlin Advisory Board
Former CFO Catalyst Repository Systems

Lew Visscher

Former Catalyst CFO providing financial leadership to high tech startups for over 30 years.

Lewis Visscher has over 30 years of diversified business advisory, management, operational, financial, and accounting experience. Lew most recently served as the CFO at Catalyst Repository Systems, which was acquired by a large public technology company in early 2019. After leaving Catalyst, Lew joined Merlin Search Technologies to serve as its Chief Financial Officer and to participate in its Advisory Board.

Prior to Catalyst, Lew was CFO for various early-stage technology businesses providing financial leadership through many operational aspects, contract negotiations, and merger and acquisition strategies. Before then Lew was with PricewaterhouseCoopers where he worked with many private and public companies on equity offerings, start-ups, acquisitions, divestitures and multinational, multi-location operations.

Lew is most famously known in the Colorado community for Lew’s List (www.lewslist.com), a job resource board for finance and accounting professionals. Lew is also involved in Financial Executives International (FEI) in both Colorado and Arizona and served as President of the Colorado chapter in 2015. Lew is also the founder and an active member of the Colorado chapter of the New Canaan Society, a Christian men’s organization. In 2009, Lew was honored as CFO of the Year by the Denver Business Journal.