Dr. Maura Sullivan is a Venture Partner in the Technology Group at RIDGE-LANE LP. 

Dr. Sullivan specializes in quantifying risk from disruptive events and helping organizations thrive amidst complexity and uncertainty, with a focus on emerging technology strategy, managing seed investments, implementing institutional innovation programs, modeling financial risk, and building data science software. 

Maura was the Chief of Strategy and Innovation at the U.S. Department of the Navy, where she served as the Executive Director of SECNAV’s Task Force Innovation, which implemented the strategic roadmap to adapt to a world increasingly driven by data.  She promoted innovation, open data, and emerging data-driven technologies including artificial intelligence/machine learning, additive manufacturing, autonomous systems, energy infrastructure, and augmented/virtual reality through pilot projects, policy change, crowdsourcing, seed funding, and scaling best practices. 

She led the Department of the Navy Silicon Valley Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) providing a conduit between DoD and non-traditional partners and identifying emerging technologies, business models, and partnerships at the physical and digital intersection.

Previously, she was a White House Fellow, where she advised the Secretary of the Navy on emerging trends in analytics, technology, and energy.  Dr. Sullivan led the restructuring of the DON management including the CIO, administrative, and business operations organizations. 

She has a Ph.D. in epidemiology from Emory University, focused in predictive modeling, and a B.S and M.S. in earth systems from Stanford University, focused in energy engineering and climate modeling.