People
Meet the team building UnGovr – bringing together expertise in scalable platforms, cybersecurity, nonprofit journalism, and civic technology.
Sean McDermott
Co-Founder & CEO
Sean brings over 30 years of software experience to UnGovr, including a 20 year career at Akamai Technologies, where he served as VP of Engineering building scalable platforms. He has deep expertise in distributed systems, platform architecture and user experience. Sean has been working in the area of improving local government for several years, which resulted in the creation of the UnGovr.org project in January 2025.
As UnGovr's CEO, Sean leads the vision and execution of the first global government transparency platform.
Zach Little
Co-Founder & CTO
Zach held Software Engineering Leadership positions at GPS Insight, ClearPathGPS, and RightScale, building cloud-native SaaS platforms and leading distributed engineering teams. He also served as CIO at Novartis Biomedical Research. With extensive experience in cloud architecture and a background in scientific computing, Zach brings expertise in building reliable, geospatial-aware systems at scale – skills directly applicable to mapping government entities and tracking civic data. He is an active contributor to open-source data infrastructure projects.
Zach is the leader of UnGovr's engineering projects, overseeing the technology strategy and execution.
Neil Barlow
Chief Security Officer
Neil Barlow is a seasoned cybersecurity executive with over two decades of experience leading security programs at global enterprises including Meta, Capital One, NYSE Euronext, HP, and Intel. As Director of Cybersecurity at Meta, he oversaw security across fintech, AI, infrastructure, and corporate domains. At Capital One, he served as International CISO and Head of Global Threat Modeling, where he holds patents in crowdsourced threat modeling systems.
Neil holds an M.Sc in Security and Forensic Computing from Dublin City University and certifications including CISSP and CRISC. He is a founding consortium member of AIUC-1, the first standard for secure and responsible AI agents. As UnGovr's CSO, Neil ensures the platform's security architecture meets the highest standards of data protection and resilience.
Kevin Davis
Co-Founder & Senior Strategic Advisor
Kevin Davis is a strategist, lecturer, and advisor specializing in business model design, community-powered growth, and responsible adoption of emerging technologies. He works with founders, media organizations, and mission-driven teams to translate complex ideas—especially AI—into clear strategy, executable roadmaps, and sustainable value creation.
As a senior strategic advisor to UnGovr, Kevin brings a sharp focus on problem framing, go-to-market clarity, and organizational readiness, helping ensure that early-stage innovation can scale without losing purpose or accountability.
Mark Nadler
Senior Product Advisor
Mark Nadler brings over 30 years of technology experience spanning both software architecture and product management at industry-leading companies including Dell and Akamai Technologies. His career has been defined by a rare ability to bridge deep technical understanding with product vision—designing, packaging, and bringing to market products that scale.
As a product advisor to UnGovr, Mark's expertise in product design, go-to-market packaging, and strategic partnerships is instrumental in shaping a platform that delivers real value to the people who need government transparency most.
Conor Shipsey
Software Engineer
Conor Shipsey is a software engineer with experience at IBM and Qualcomm. At IBM, he worked on AI, cloud computing, and front-end development with React in a fast-paced agile environment. At Qualcomm, he automated processes with TypeScript and collaborated across globally distributed teams. He holds a first-class honours B.Sc in Computer Science from University College Cork.
At UnGovr, Conor contributes across the full stack, building and maintaining the systems that power government entity discovery, data processing, and the user-facing platform. He is also the primary developer of UnGovr's mobile apps.
Christian Ramirez
DevOps Engineer
Christian Ramirez has a strong interest in government and currently serves on the Santa Barbara County Civil Grand Jury. In this role, he works directly with public agencies, government records, and investigations into government operations. Christian is helping bring this transparency and accountability lens to the UnGovr project.
Christian is driven by a belief that access to information strengthens communities and empowers individuals, and he is committed to making government more understandable, accessible, and accountable to the public.
Executive team members Sean McDermott, Zach Little, and Neil Barlow also work as developers and operators of the platform.
Why this team?
UnGovr sits at the intersection of technology and civic infrastructure. Building it well requires understanding both how to build scalable platforms and why public information matters.
Our team combines experience building systems that serve millions of users, cybersecurity leadership, deep product expertise, direct experience in government oversight and accountability, and strategic vision for scaling mission-driven organizations – the exact skills needed to make government information more accessible, accountable, and secure.