Built from inside
the Pentagon.
War Room exists because the intelligence should have been there all along.
The map I wished existed.
I grew up in South Seattle, raised by Cambodian parents who fled the Khmer Rouge. Getting into Lakeside School felt like stepping into a world I'd only seen on television. That experience — navigating unfamiliar systems, learning to find the right doors — became the lens through which I've approached every career since.
Before the Pentagon, I was an early employee at Redfin, where I helped co-author patented real estate search technology. I learned what it looks like when complex, fragmented information gets structured into something people can actually use.
When I joined the Department of Defense — eventually becoming the DoD's first Customer Experience Officer — I saw the same problem at a different scale. Thousands of program offices. Billions in contracts. And BD teams on the outside trying to navigate it all with spreadsheets, LinkedIn, and word of mouth.
War Room is the system I needed but couldn't find. It takes the org structure, the people, and the contract signals that are technically public — and makes them navigable. So your team can spend less time searching and more time building the relationships that actually win work.
Career at the intersection
of technology and public service.
Led enterprise-wide customer experience transformation across the largest organization in the world. Focused on digital innovation, design infrastructure, and building user-centered practices inside complex government bureaucracies.
Worked inside the DoD's Silicon Valley-style tech unit to bring modern software practices — agile, user research, rapid prototyping — to defense programs.
Joined Redfin in its early days and co-authored patented real estate search technology. Developed a deep playbook for making complex, fragmented data navigable for everyday users.
Hosts the podcast "Life Between Titles," exploring identity, purpose, and career transitions. Currently writing the memoir "Halfway Light" — the story of a kid from South Seattle who ended up at the Pentagon.
Make the defense market as navigable as a consumer product — so that the best companies, not just the best-connected ones, can compete for the work.
Opportunity in defense has always been about who you know. War Room is changing that — by surfacing the intelligence that levels the field for every BD team willing to do the work.