About Us

Clara Conti is an authentic and inclusive leader with over two decades of experience successfully guiding organizations in the commercial, federal, and nonprofit sectors through comprehensive transformations. This includes reinventing company strategies and market positions, empowering executive teams, implementing enhanced customer acquisition and retention policies, securing funding, and defining and executing exit strategies.

Conti is renowned for being a persuasive communicator and a powerful public speaker with executive presence. This ability enables her to effectively build long-term C-level relationships and partnerships, establish plans, and take action to increase opportunities and revenues. She has a proven track record of success in sales and revenue growth, identifying key opportunities, developing leads, and driving contracts through capture and execution.

Conti works cooperatively with Boards of Directors, team members, and strategic partners to create an aligned vision with tangible objectives for achieving goals and developing strategies for growth, sustainability, and market leadership. She is an experienced coach and mentor for young professionals, with specific expertise in developing talent, building high-performing teams, and driving innovative culture change.

She maintains a robust social media presence focused on promoting diversity and inclusion, strategic partnerships, leadership advice, emotional intelligence, and professional development. Her efforts have been acknowledged by the 2022 Wash100 award in recognition of her leadership, innovation, influence, reliability, achievement, vision, and accomplishments in the Public Sector.

Mr. Grimaldi comes to the Company directly from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) where he spent the last twelve years. At the CIA, Mr. Grimaldi led software development programs that furthered U.S. national security objectives. These software programs collected foreign intelligence; conducted effective covert action as directed by the President of the United States; and safeguarded the most sensitive state secrets that help keep our nation safe. His unique experiences included state-actor advanced persistent threats.

Prior to the joining CIA in 2009, Mr. Grimaldi spent eight years at Microsoft Corporation. While at Microsoft, Mr. Grimaldi was a senior team member of a group of software developers who created the SQL Server database. Additionally, he contributed to several software products including Windows and the C# programming language. These products reshaped the industry and added tremendous value to Microsoft Corporation for customers and shareholders alike. Five of his software inventions that were developed at Microsoft are protected by U.S. patents.

In addition to proficiency at managing software development on a large scale for very large enterprises, Mr. Grimaldi has 15 years of high-level cloud computing experience spread across his tenures at both Microsoft and the CIA. His cloud computing experience began in March 2006 when Amazon first launched their AWS cloud. In 2012, the CIA and Amazon put an AWS cloud on-premise with the $600 Million C2S contract. Since that time, Mr. Grimaldi has led the creation of high-security systems leveraging cloud computing.  His expertise includes leveraging the Amazon AWS cloud, the Google GCP cloud, the Microsoft Azure cloud, and the Oracle OCI cloud to process and protect the most sensitive data. Mr. Grimaldi graduated from the University of Maryland with a BS in Computer Science.

Nichole F. Lopes has led IT engineering teams since 2006, including work at General Electric, ExxonMobil, and IBM. She was in charge of IBM’s Global Business Services (GBS) Quality Assurance Group, successfully achieving IBM GBS assessment at CMMI Level 5, the highest process maturity level. As an expert in process, she also holds certifications in Safe Agile and Six Sigma. She has contracted for various government entities under Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin, including a deployment to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

As an entrepreneur, she has successfully launched and run 7 different businesses including a collegiate licensed magnet company, embroidery LLC, Ebay/Half.com store, IT federal consulting LLC, and real estate LLCs.

Ms. Lopes earned her Bachelor of Science in Supply Chain and Information Systems with a minor in Engineering Entrepreneurship from Pennsylvania State University. She also acquired her Masters of Manufacturing Management from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and College of Engineering. Nichole has honed her leadership skills outside of the office as a recipient of The President’s Volunteer Service Award, Guinness World Record Sports Expert, USA Olympic National Team Coach in rugby, and athlete in judo and rugby for Penn State, earning two Division 1 National Championship titles

Mr. Asbury has successfully led multiple early-stage companies in IT security. From 2018-2020, Mr. Asbury served as President and Member of ThreatAdvice, LLC, a subsidiary of NXTsoft, LLC, a fintech and Security software company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. At the time of joining the company, NXTsoft was in its first year of operations. The ThreatAdvice product suite consisted of computer-based learning software aimed at educating end users and driving awareness of risks present in an organization. While leading ThreatAdvice, Mr. Asbury oversaw the acquisition and integration of two technical service firms. The acquisition and integration of these companies led to the creation of a single Managed Security Services Provider functioning as ThreatAdvice. Mr. Asbury successfully integrated these organizations and leveraged NXTsoft’s software capabilities to create and market a viable virtual CISO offering.

Prior to his tenure at NXTsoft, Mr. Asbury served as President and Member of Warren Averett Technology Group, LLC (WATG) an affiliate of Warren Averett, LLC for six years. Warren Averett is a U.S. top 30 super-regional accounting and consulting firm headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Mr. Asbury attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he majored in Business Administration.