Abe Usher

Abe Usher is an ex-Google engineer and entrepreneur with deep experience creating innovation technology for Special Operations and the US Intelligence Community. Abe recently served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for DigitalGlobe Intelligence Solutions, and as a Vice President of Radiant Solutions a division of Maxar, where he provided technical leadership to a 650-person business unit.  DigitalGlobe and Maxar are well-known innovators in the realm of artificial intelligence and deep learning — creating capabilities that allow computers to automatically detect and understand objects in satellite imagery and photos. Mr. Usher provides leadership and technical guidance to DigitalGlobe and Radiant Solutions teams supporting US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and to major Intelligence Community organizations including National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies. A former Ranger-qualified Army Officer with deep technology skills, Mr. Usher has traveled extensively to work in direct support of Special Operations Forces (SOF) and National Defense customers at “the mission edge” including overseas travel to the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Before his technical leadership role at DigitalGlobe Mr. Usher was the CTO for the Radiant Group, a 450-person technology business that supports the Intelligence Community and DoD with advanced software solutions and machine learning capabilities.  At Radiant Mr. Usher oversaw the integration of technical capabilities across five-member business units and worked to help grow the group’s annual revenue over $100M, while expanding its customer breadth to span every US intelligence agency. Prior to the Radiant Group, Mr. Usher co-founded the innovative technology company HumanGeo (later acquired by Radiant).  As the CTO of HumanGeo, he provided technical vision and helped grow the team from start-up stage to a technology powerhouse with $24 million in annual revenue.  While at HumanGeo he was recognized with the Fed100 award, identifying him as one of the top 100 innovative technology leaders in the Federal Government IT sector.

Before HumanGeo, Mr. Usher was a senior engineer within Google’s Enterprise Division where he worked on geospatial and search technology in support of the Google Earth and Google Maps team.  His areas of specialty at Google were artificial intelligence and data mining software. Prior to Google, he also has served as a US Government cryptologist at the National Security Agency (NSA), applying machine learning capabilities to large scale data mining.  At NSA, he was awarded a Joint Service Commendation Medal for his new algorithms for advance cyber-geolocation technology.

Before working as an NSA cryptologist, he served in the United States Army as a Paratrooper Infantry Officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, earning a Meritorious Service Medal for leadership excellence. Mr. Usher holds a Masters of Science in Information Systems from George Mason University, and a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy at West Point.