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Company · Our Team

Meet the humans behind AI safety.

Engineers and executives united in preventing AI failures before they cascade into catastrophe.

  • Tiarne Hawkins, Chief Executive Officer of Optica Labs

    Tiarne Hawkins

    Chief Executive Officer

    7 years building training pipelines for Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI. $500M+ in programs.

    The insight: training data can’t capture human chaos.

  • Nick Reese, Chief Operations Officer of Optica Labs

    Nick Reese

    Chief Operations Officer

    Former DHS Director of Emerging Tech Policy, authored the federal AI strategy.

    Saw how untested systems create regulatory crises.

  • Chris Luckenbill, Chief Design Officer of Optica Labs

    Chris Luckenbill

    Chief Design Officer

    Decade driving automation and AI adoption through partnerships with Apple, IBM, Netradyne.

    Watched the gap between lab success and production failure kill enterprise deals.

  • Jawad Ahsan, Chief Financial Officer of Optica Labs

    Jawad Ahsan

    Chief Financial Officer

    Former GE CFO, Axon CFO and 10mK Founder scaling tech companies from startup to public markets.

    Saw how user behavior and brand evolve together.

We’ve seen AI fail around the world and across sectors.

Our team combines decades of experience across government intelligence, AI research, policy creation, and product development dedicated to making AI safety the foundation of faster, safer innovation.