Leaders in their respective domains helping steer Summit Lake Data + AI through hyper-growth.
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Michael Sicher
Advisor
Michael is CEO of Identiti, one of the nation’s largest brand implementation companies, headquartered outside Chicago.
With manufacturing a core vertical for Summit Lake, Michael’s operating expertise and industry relationships are critical as we develop domain-specific agents for the vertical.
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William R. Waas
Advisor
Bill is Chairman of the Society for Information Management (SIM) SPARC, with more than 40 years of information technology and operations leadership. He also taught Summit Lake’s founder at Northwestern University.
His depth of IT domain knowledge, strategic thinking, and CIO relationships help ensure Summit Lake stays true to its mission.
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Said Taiym
Advisor
Said is Chief Operating Officer of Integrity, a Dallas-based insurance and financial services leader. He previously held senior roles at Lockton, AF Group, XL Group, Zurich North America, and Accenture.
His background as CDO and CIO at some of the largest insurance organizations on Earth is critical as Summit Lake focuses on insurance.
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Tariq Hassan
Advisor
Tariq Hassan is a global business executive with over 25 years of experience leading digital, data, and marketing transformations across Fortune 50 companies and high-growth startups. Currently serving as the Chief Marketing Officer and Customer Growth Officer for The Wendy’s Company, Tariq specializes in modernizing iconic brands at the intersection of culture, commerce, and technology to drive customer loyalty and profitable scale.
For Summit Lake, he brings valuable board-level expertise in brand building, performance marketing, and digital innovation, offering the strategic oversight needed to capture market growth and navigate complex consumer-facing tech transformations.
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Laurent Farci
Advisor
Laurent Farci is an executive technology leader and CIO-level operator recognized for his ability to translate complex operational challenges into scalable, high-leverage organizational frameworks. Most recently as the Global CIO at Monks, Laurent provided the strategic oversight necessary to navigate extreme hyper-growth, successfully integrating 34 acquisitions across 72 global offices and unifying fractured enterprise systems into dependable corporate backbones.
For Summit Lake, he brings deep governance expertise in AI-first operations, clean data architecture, and practical risk management, leveraging a philosophy of architectural simplicity and clean trade-offs to ensure the organization executes its long-term mission with total confidence and momentum.
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Vinny Carpenter
Advisor
Vinny Carpenter is a veteran technology executive with over 30 years of experience leading Cloud, Platform, and DevOps engineering within Fortune 100 and major financial institutions, including Northwestern Mutual and Wells Fargo. He specializes in large-scale modernizations, technology governance, and transitioning artificial intelligence from experimental demos into disciplined enterprise production systems.
For Summit Lake, he brings deep expertise in architectural integrity, robust risk management, and scalable governance to ensure the board navigates complex infrastructure decisions with clarity and financial accountability.
