As the Fire Chief of the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA), Brian Fennessy leads more than 1,800 firefighters and non-sworn personnel who collectively serve 2 million residents across 23 cities and unincorporated counties.

Chief Fennessy began his career in 1978 with the USFS and BLM working as a hotshot crewmember and ultimately crew superintendent.

In 1990, Fennessy joined the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department and ultimately became Chief of the Department in 2015. In 2018, he was appointed Fire Chief of the OCFA.

Chief Fennessy currently serves as Chair of the FIRESCOPE Board of Directors; represents California as a member of the Western Fire Chiefs Association Wildland Fire Policy Committee; represents the nine West Division FEMA Urban Search & Rescue Task Forces; and President of the California Fire Chiefs Association. In 2022, Chief Fennessy was recognized as CalChiefs Fire Chief of the Year and in 2023, the International Association of Fire Chief’s Career Fire Chief of the Year.

John has changed the way we live with fire through his 501(c)(3) non-profit organization Watch Duty. John spent many years in Silicon Valley focusing on underserved markets that had been overlooked by technologists. In 2012 he founded Zenput as CTO, focused on retail food services operations which was acquired in 2022. After living in San Francisco for 16 years, he moved off-the-grid to Sonoma County in 2020 where he was faced with the terrifying reality of life in the wildlands without the information needed to make informed decisions. Having developed software for over 30 years beginning at age 8, John found himself with a life or death problem he had to solve not only for himself, but for his community. He spent more than a year understanding the problems and then together, with his team, created Watch Duty in just 80 days. Today Watch Duty has a team of over 200 active and retired wildland firefighters, dispatchers, first responders, and reporters supporting millions of citizens and first responders who rely on the Watch Duty App across the American West to stay safe.

Fiona Spruill is the CEO of Overstory, a startup that applies AI to satellite imagery in order to reduce the risk of wildfires and power outages. Before taking over as CEO, Fiona served as Chief Product & People Officer where she played a central role in the development of Overstory’s product. Prior to that she was COO of Meetup, the global community platform that was acquired by WeWork. As COO, she was responsible for product, design, business strategy, sales and customer support. Before Meetup, she spent 14 years at The New York Times in various roles, including running the digital newsroom and launching a variety of mobile apps.

Splitting time between San Francisco and Mendocino County, Bill loves both the forests of Northern California and the energy and pace of Silicon Valley. He is passionate about the potential of startups to create new tools for firefighters, policy makers, utilities, insurance companies, landowners and other stakeholders in order to restore a healthy relationship with fire.

Prior to starting Convective Capital, Bill was co-founder & CEO of WePay, a fintech company which was acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase in 2017. Bill is an active angel investor in over 50 seed-stage companies and was previously a Part-Time Partner at Y Combinator.

When he isn’t talking to founders, you’ll find him skiing or working on his timber ranch in Boonville CA. In the past, he volunteered with the Anderson Valley Fire Department and American Red Cross Disaster Action Teams. Bill lives in San Francisco and Boonville with his wife Katey, son Sully, newborn daughter Finley, and Rhodesian Ridgeback Penny. Bill has a B.S. in Computer Science from Boston College.