John Bennett

John Bennett is a career civil servant with 14 years of service in positions of escalating responsibility in the US Department of War (Defense). Now at Colonel-equivalent rank (GS-15), his career began in and inevitably returns to the nuts-and-bolts of military fuel budgets, with digressions into economics, modeling, statistics, fiscal policy, federal budgetary theory, and congressional relations. He is a pillar of the local DC rationalist community, hosting several of the DC ACX Meetups Everywhere, and the “travel rat” community, attending several rationalist events a year. He has spoken at EAGs and other community events on the “Milton Friedman Theory of Policy Change” and edited the Yudkowsky-Soares book “If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies” (2025) for political sensitivities. As a frequently overdressed bureaucracy apologist, he appreciates systems, spreadsheet games, and penguins.

August Veix

August Veix is CTO of Simpli, where he is transitioning into a fractional role following his deployment of an enterprise AI product in college financing. He previously ran his family’s business, Forward Education, a career and college counseling company whose work he fell in love with for the broad sampling of people he gets to deeply understand and help (and for his special interest in anti-inductive signaling). He graduated from Drexel University with a bachelor’s degree in data science because a loophole in their scholarship policy yielded an uncapped stipend which became the down payment on his home.

Rachel Shu

Rachel Shu spent the last several years working as a software developer with researchers and building community infrastructure in SF, most recently as Director of Mox, a 200-member incubator and coworking space in the Mission closely tied into various cultural movements there.

Sammy Cottrell

Sammy Cottrell has worked as a chief of staff and producer for various startups, nonprofits, and CEOs, with a focus on logistics and complex systems. Often the token extrovert on rationalist teams, he enjoys running Blood on the Clocktower and solving more practical coordination problems.

Samuel Roland

Samuel Roland is a non-resident fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, where he researches legal structures shaping technological innovation and regulatory reform. He is also a JD candidate at Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He holds a business honors degree from the University of Texas at Austin and previously managed a diesel logistics firm.

Sam was recruited for One Last Job as Director of Takeoff, our November conference on AI Policy.

Ben Shindel

Ben Shindel is a PhD materials scientist and forecasting enthusiast with an excellent prediction record on Metaculus and Manifold. He works as an engineer supporting the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Lab.

Ben is volunteering as Content Director for The Overhang, our September conference on forecasting, a role he is reprising from 2025’s Manifest x DC.