Who we are
Core Team
Executive Director
Elizabeth joined BERI in February 2023 to support operations and grow new collaborations, and she moved into the executive director position in November 2024. In her previous roles, she worked as a Chief of Staff at various tech start-ups, including Corvid Technologies. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Peace, War, and Defense from the University of North Carolina. In her free time, she is an avid hiker, scuba diver, and home chef.
Special Projects Manager
Lara joined BERI in February 2025 to support operations. She also works in web and data at Duke University. Her previous roles were primarily focused on educational program management at the Institute for Defense & Business and the Warrior-Scholar Project. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina, where she also worked as a Chancellor’s Fellow. Her passions include books, board games, and body art.
Program Manager (Part-Time)
Andreas joined BERI in July 2025 to oversee new program development. A consultant, program manager, and community builder, his background is in workforce and economic development. He is also a trained engineer who spent part of his career in the aerospace and manufacturing industry. For fun, he immerses himself in stories, sports, strategy games, traveling, and socializing.
Bookkeeper (Contract)
Cierra is the Managing Director of Oak Books Limited. Providing bookkeeping services to a range of clients, she has a penchant for working with nonprofit organizations, and first onboarded with BERI in 2019. In her spare time, she roams the English countryside with her family.
Board of Directors
Elizabeth Cooper
President
Elizabeth joined BERI in February 2023 to support operations and grow new collaborations, and she moved into the executive director position in November 2024. In her previous roles, she worked as a Chief of Staff at various tech start-ups, including Corvid Technologies. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Peace, War, and Defense from the University of North Carolina. In her free time, she is an avid hiker, scuba diver, and home chef.
Jess Reidel
Treasurer
Jess is a physicist and senior research scientist in the Physics & Informatics Lab at NTT research in Sunnyvale, CA. He was previously a visiting scholar at the CHAI at UC Berkeley, and held postdoctoral research positions at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and at IBM Research. He earned a Bachelor's in physics from Princeton in 2007 and a PhD in Physics from UC Santa Barbara in 2012. His website is jessriedel.com.
Sawyer Bernath
Secretary & Director
Sawyer currently works as the Operations Director at Tarbell. He is Treasurer of the Board at FAR AI and a board member at SecureBio. He previously worked as the Executive Director of BERI until November 2024. Prior to joining BERI in 2019, Sawyer was a Production Manager at Research Electro Optics (now Excelitas Boulder) and Head of Production at Modular Robotics. He has a B.S. in physics from Tufts University.