Shadya Maldonado is the co-founder of ArcQubit Inc., a Tampa-based software company. She brings 17 years of experience in security operations, technology modernization, and risk management across U.S., international, and military domains. A combat veteran with notable service in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Shadya held senior engineering and leadership roles at Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory before her assignment at Booz Allen to establish a cyber systems engineering team within NASA's Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility program. She has earned multiple degrees as a first-generation college graduate, including a Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity from The George Washington University, and is now nearing the end of her doctoral candidacy focused on quantum attack surface modeling. Shadya's career spans work with DARPA, DOE, IAEA, NASA, and DoW, and she has authored more than twenty publications across IEEE, American Nuclear Society, and international cyber-physical security and regulatory forums.