William (“Bill”) Santana Li has served as our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) since April 2013. Mr. Li is an American entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience from working in the global automotive sector and founding and leading a number of startups. From 1990 to 1999, Mr. Li held multiple business and technical positions at Ford Motor Company across four continents.

His positions at Ford ranged from component, systems, and vehicle engineering with the Visteon, Mazda, and Lincoln brands; to business and product strategy on the United States youth market, India, and the emerging markets in Asia-Pacific and South America; as well as the financial turnaround of Ford of Europe. In addition, he was on the “Amazon” team, which established an all-new modular plant in Brazil. Subsequently, he served as Director of Mergers & Acquisitions.

After internally securing $250 million in financing, Mr. Li founded and served as COO of GreenLeaf LLC, a Ford Motor Company subsidiary that became the world’s second largest automotive recycler. Under his leadership, GreenLeaf grew to more than 600 employees, 20 locations worldwide, and annual sales of approximately $150 million. At the age of 28, Bill was the youngest senior executive at Ford Motor Company worldwide.

After successfully establishing GreenLeaf, Mr. Li was recruited by SoftBank Venture Capital to establish and serve as the President and CEO of the Model E Corporation, a newly established automobile manufacturer that focused on the “Subscribe and Drive” model in California. Mr. Li also founded Carbon Motors Corporation in 2003, and as its Chairman and CEO until February 2013, focused it on developing the world’s first purpose-built law enforcement patrol vehicle.

Mr. Li earned a BSEE from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the University of Detroit Mercy.

With extensive finance and corporate strategy experience, Dwivedi most recently served as the Chief Financial Officer of Nxu, Inc. (NXU). He joined the company in 2022 and helped to take it public on Nasdaq in the same year. He then led the company’s strategy around capital markets, investor relations, finance operations and corporate growth. Prior to his CFO role at Nxu, Dwivedi served as Director of Finance for Cox Automotive from 2019 to 2022 where he successfully ran the Manheim Logistics business. From 2018 to 2019, he was the Director of Presales at the SaaS company Workiva, and from 2010 to 2017 Dwivedi served in several corporate finance roles of increasing responsibility at the General Electric Company across both the GE Capital and GE Industrial businesses. Dwivedi began his career at ABN-AMRO, N.A. and was instrumental in building one of the first data analytics teams at Sears Holdings Company. Dwivedi earned his Bachelors in Finance from Loyola University – Chicago and his MBA from Yale School of Management.

Stacy Stephens is our Chief Client Officer and co-founded the Company in April of 2013. Previously, he co-founded Carbon Motors Corporation with Mr. Li, where he led marketing operations, sales, product management, partnership marketing and Client service. At Carbon Motors, Mr. Stephens established the “Carbon Council,” a Client interface and users group consisting of over 3,000 law enforcement professionals across all 50 states and actively serving over 2,200 law enforcement agencies.

Prior to co-founding Carbon Motors Corporation, Mr. Stephens served as a police officer for the Coppell (Texas) Police Department from 2000 to 2002. In recognition of his accomplishments, Mr. Stephens was named one of Government Technology magazine’s “Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers” in 2011.

Mr. Stephens studied aerospace engineering at the University of Texas in Arlington. He subsequently earned a degree in criminal justice and graduated as valedictorian from Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas. He is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (“IACP”) and also sits on the IACP Division of State Associations of Chiefs of Police SafeShield Project, which seeks to critically examine existing and developing technologies for the purpose of preventing and minimizing officer injuries and fatalities.

Mercedes Soria is our Chief Intelligence Officer and has been with Knightscope since April 2013. Ms. Soria is a technology professional with over 15 years of experience in systems development, life cycle management, project leadership, software architecture and web applications development.

Ms. Soria led IT strategy development at Carbon Motors Corporation from 2011 until 2013. From 2002 to 2010, Ms. Soria was Channel Manager and Software Development Manager for internal operations at Deloitte & Touche LLP, where her team deployed software that was used daily across the firm’s thousands of employees. From 1998 to 2002, Ms. Soria worked as a software developer at Gibson Musical Instruments leading the effort to establish its online presence.

Ms. Soria obtained Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from Middle Tennessee State University with honors, as well as an Executive MBA from Emory University. She is also a certified Six Sigma green belt professional and a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

Aaron Lehnhardt has served as our Chief Design Officer since November 2015. Previously, from the Company’s inception in April 2013 until November 2015, Mr. Lehnhardt served as Chief Designer of the Company. From 2002 to April 2013, Mr. Lehnhardt was the co-owner of Lehnhardt Creative LLC where he worked on advanced propulsion vehicle design, personal electronics, product design, video game design, and concept development work.

From 2004 to 2011, Mr. Lehnhardt was Chief Designer at California Motors (“Calmotors”), where he led the design for various concepts for HyRider hybrid vehicles, the Calmotors 1000 horsepower hybrid super car, Terra Cruzer super off-road vehicle, multiple vehicles for the U.S. Military, and various other hybrid and electric vehicles. He was also the lead designer and partner of Ride Vehicles LLC, a sister company to Calmotors, which worked on a 3-wheeled, standup personal mobility vehicle.

Jason Gonzalez is SVP Client Development and has been with Knightscope since June 2018.  He is a security professional with over 20 years of experience, delivering solutions to the private and government sectors. He has extensive sales experience in both security technology and security services.

Mr. Gonzalez began his security career with Tyco Integrated Security in 1997, selling technology solutions across a broad range of commercial industries. His success there paved the way to join Honeywell’s Security and Fire division, where he drove sales through their reseller program in the Western U.S. He then transitioned to the security services side of the industry, leading him to join G4S Secure Solutions in 2006, a global service provider of security personnel and management. As the Regional Director of Business Development for the Western U.S., he was directly responsible for local and national account sales, including hiring, training and managing a sales team.

After nine years, and over $70M in revenue generated, Mr. Gonzalez moved on to a Regional Vice President role with Whelan Security, managing sales and complex security operations across five Western U.S. states with full P&L responsibility.

Throughout his career, Mr. Gonzalez has demonstrated his ability to develop strategic partnerships and drive high growth through optimizing sales channels, organizational productivity, and team building.

Ronald Gallegos is SVP Client Experience and has been with Knightscope since 2016. Mr. Gallegos has over 21 years of experience working with the C-level in global physical security. He has served as a trusted advisor, providing solutions to global Fortune 1000 corporations, large public safety organizations and critical infrastructure entities. His background ranges from leadership in physical security human resources, systems integrations, global situational awareness & location-based social media Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and autonomous robotics and artificial intelligence.

Mr. Gallegos started with the Northern California Regional team for AlliedBarton (AlliedUniversal) the largest US Security Services company, where he was promoted to Regional Manager for the San Francisco Bay Area. He later joined Securitas, one of the largest security contractors in the world, and was based in the Silicon Valley as a trusted advisor, initiating and project managing many Fortune 1000 implementations. He later excelled as a Regional Manager at G4S (Group 4 Securicor), the world’s largest security organization.

Prior to Knightscope, Mr. Gallegos served as Director of Enterprise Accounts at Geofeedia, where he managed a team and executed all aspects of enterprise software implementations for global physical security teams. He also helped launch the corporate security practice as well as acquired and managed relationships with more than 60 Fortune 500 strategic accounts.

Mr. Gallegos holds a BSBA and MBA from San Francisco State University. He has also served several years as a Board Member for the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) San Francisco Bay Area Chapter.