Samantha Hamilton is an applied AI leader with more than a decade building AI systems for defense and national security. Her background spans software engineering, machine learning, and AI program leadership, with a focus on delivering capabilities that reach operational end users. She previously led AI/ML teams at BigBear.ai, building and deploying solutions for the DoD and Intelligence Community. Samantha now serves as VP of AI at Heven AeroTech, where she owns the AI and autonomy stack for a hydrogen-electric drone platform capable of 8+ hours of flight on a single fill. Her team builds the onboard intelligence - computer vision, autonomous navigation, and edge decision-making - that enables unmanned systems to operate without a human in the loop. Her work is focused on one of the industry's hardest unsolved problems: getting AI out of the lab and onto aircraft that operate in contested, GPS-denied, and communications-limited environments.