The team behind Vardo AI.

Leif Ullman

Leif is a technology executive and entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience building and scaling SaaS companies — including taking one from concept to acquisition. He's served as an Entrepreneur in Residence and contract CTO across multiple ventures, with a track record across both early-stage startups and enterprise. His background spans cloud infrastructure, high-performance engineering teams, and strategic partnerships across SaaS, education, and commercial markets. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an MBA. Leif joins Ryan as technical co-lead — bringing the executive and architecture layer to complement Ryan's deep engineering and government delivery track record.

Ryan Thomas

Ryan is a full stack software engineer and founder with 20+ years of experience — his work spans everything from machine learning and computer vision research to building cloud-scale systems in GCP and AWS for the military. He consults across several industries — transit, image processing, video editing, and business systems. His background spans startups, government contracts, and R&D — and state and local government is where some of his most impactful work lives. Ryan helped build Colorado's CBE — the state's business entity registration platform — and developed the property tax appeals system for Eagle County assessors. He's also shipped award-winning state government platforms, load management systems for carriers, and biometric recognition systems for defense applications.

Forrest Senti

Forrest is a product strategist and technology advisor with 10+ years of consulting across product management, strategy, and cybersecurity. He's built and shipped secure systems for Air Force, Army, DHS, and defense agencies, led product and partnerships at Paper Boat Systems, and spent 5+ years as VP of Programs & Operations at a national technology center — running the full lifecycle from concept to deployment at scale. A 2025 Colorado Governor's Fellow and former Honorary Commander at the United States Air Force Academy, he brings deep relationships across state government, federal agencies, and civic tech stakeholders. At Vardo, Forrest leads strategy and delivery — translating complex client problems into scoped, executable builds and making sure what ships actually works in the real world.