Mr. Grochol (Grow-shull) is a defense executive with a passion for building technology in the defense and intelligence space. He serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Iron EagleX, Inc., a fast-growing defense technology startup. Since 2019 IEX has been recognized as one of Tampa Bay’s Best Places to Work (2022) as well as Tampa Bay’s Fastest Growing Company (2021) with over 850% growth. IEX is projected to grow from >$1M in Revenue in 2018 to over $80M in 2023, making IEX one of the fastest growing government technology businesses in over 40 years. Prior to IEX, Mr. Grochol was the Chief Strategy Officer for another small defense firm supporting the Air Force, Navy, Combatant Commands, and Intelligence Community. His work contributed to that company being recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the US for 5 years in a row, from 2014 through 2018. Prior to becoming a business executive, Mr. Grochol served as an intelligence and aviation subject matter expert supporting the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) supporting Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L). Mr. Grochol focused on technology application in real world environments, which included technical expertise in computer networking, full motion video engineering, data science, statistical analysis, and computer vision (a subset of machine learning). Mr. Grochol recently served as a member of the board of directors of the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation where he sat on the finance committee and was responsible for assisting the foundation as it advances the tradecraft of GEOINT (mapping) professionals to include the foundation giving over $1M in scholarships in STEM focused areas to students from ages 12-35, as well as managing the foundations $5M Annual Budget. He is an active member in the Open Geospatial Consortium as well as the American Geographical Society. Mr. Grochol is also an active member in the non-profit Business Executives for National Security (BENS) headed by former USSOCOM Commander Joe Votel. Mr. Grochol has been an instructor for the Hillsborough Country Economic Development Center teaching veterans how to start and run their own small businesses. He is an Air Force Veteran with over 2,000 combat hours supporting US Special Operations Forces providing close air support from the AC-130 Gunship and various other non-standard aviation platforms.