Dan Woolley
Dan Woolley is the Founder and Managing Director of the Ponderosa Management Group. Over his nearly 50 years in the high-tech industry, he has cultivated lasting business relationships with globally complex organizations, created and executed on business strategy for early stage cyber and health care companies, and led strategic business operations and business alliances at Fortune 100 companies such as Dell, CA Technologies, and ICL/Fujitsu.
Prior to his retirement in 2025, Dan was MITRE Corporations' Entrepreneur In-Residence where he helped MITRE’ technology leaders identify and introduce emerging potential dual use technologies to the commercial market. In 2019 MITRE asked him to lead a Presidential Management Agenda (PMA) project (Gov’t Effectiveness Applied Research Canter – GEAR) designed to introduce emerging technology to address government business challenges more effectively.
Bringing new ideas and technologies to market is not new for Dan. As a member of the founding team for Ernst & Young’s Information Security Practice he helped define a $60M RTM for new cyber security solutions and as CEO for SAIC’s Global Integrity he established the Financial Services ISAC and then went on to navigate the complex advanced cyber solutions at CA Technologies to capture the coveted position as Microsoft’s Global Partner of the Year and Cyber Security Partner of the Year. At Dell he was responsible for five of Dell’s seven Strategic Global Alliances that generated over $5B in annual revenue and oversaw growth of over 350 Dell Cyber Partners in establishing mid market cyber security dominance.
A Co-Founder and General Partner at the MACH37 Cyber Accelerator, he and his Partner funded and launched over 50 cyber security seed stage startups generating over $100M in additional investment and created over 250 new cyber jobs in the Commonwealth of VA. After 10 years, over 20% of the investments were still in operation, several had sustained ARR of over $50M and two had achieved valuations of over $1B.
Dan spent 22 years in the US Air Force and retired from his last assignment at the Pentagon in 2000 as a Lieutenant Colonel assigned in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In addition to his primary role as a senior Public Affairs Officer and Air Force spokesman, he is also credited with identifying, acquiring, deploying and implementing a range emerging technology solutions focused on advancing mission innovation not only for the Air Staff and Headquarters USAF but also DoD and Air Force wide.
Currently, he is a mentor and advisor with WRC DARPA accelerator, GMU’s iCorp Accelerator, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) and the CCI Accelerator, SmartCities Actuator, Israeli Aerospace Industries Accelerator, and MassChallenge Accelerator.