About CDCF

Director of AI & Venture Ecosystems in Microsoft’s Office of the CTO, where he designs and leads cross-company initiatives integrating innovation, product development, and community engagement. With over twenty years of experience launching and scaling ventures across enterprise, deep tech, and social impact ecosystems, he brings a multidisciplinary background as a developer, educator, lawyer, entrepreneur, and venture builder. Taylor also helps shape the Catholic University of America’s Leonum Institute, dedicated to exploring the intersection of AI, innovation, and authentic human flourishing.

Andrew has led AI developer communities & product businesses for Google X, AWS, Microsoft, and as Silicon Valley founder/venture fellow. While leading Responsible AI in Meta ads monetization, he launched products for AI governance & youth protection. As a Lieutenant Colonel at US Cyber Command, he helped author the DoD’s responsible AI principles. A founding member of SENT Ventures and Arimathea Investing, Andrew holds an MBA/MA in Arabic from Wharton, and BS in Aerospace Engineering from Notre Dame with minors in Public Policy and Catholic Social Teaching.

Catholic priest incardinated in the Diocese of Rome, stationed in the Diocesan Pilgrimage Office. Fr. John is passionate about harnessing technology in service of the Church’s evangelizing mission, in a community-driven and synodal fashion. He has contributed to various open source projects, is the author of a Liturgical Calendar API and a Bible API, and has helped foster the growth of Open Source Catholic, a growing community of Catholic developers dedicated to building open source technology for the Church.

CEO of AiWorkify, a London-based company accelerating AI startups and facilitating AI adoption in corporations worldwide. He holds an MBA from CEMA and specializations from Universidad Austral and Scalabl Academy. Eugenio is also Chairman of the Renova Mas Foundation, a global network of lay missionaries dedicated to optimizing Catholic parishes; senior lecturer in Corporate Innovation at the University of CEMA and Coventry University; and Chairman of Pastoral de Música, an organization supporting musicians and enhancing Christian music services across the Spanish-speaking world.

Dominican priest and former tech entrepreneur with nearly fifteen years in the high-tech industry. He co-authored a best-selling book on internet networking, co-founded a network security company serving Fortune 500 firms, and worked with pioneers at IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing. After a transformative trip to Rome in 1999, he entered the Dominican novitiate and was ordained in 2014. He now evangelizes within Silicon Valley and serves as Director of Mission Advancement at the Angelicum in Rome.

Priest of the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky, ordained in 2009 after formation at Saint Meinrad Seminary. He serves as Pastor of St. Leo Parish in Murray, Chaplain of the Catholic Newman Center at Murray State University, and Director of Ongoing Formation for Priests. Combining pastoral ministry with a passion for technology, he developed Pastoral Parish, a software platform that helps priests organize and automate liturgical and sacramental duties, now used by parishes across the United States.

Fr. Michael Baggot, L.C., is an Associate Professor of Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome and an Invited Professor of Theology at the Angelicum. He is a Research Scholar at the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights and serves on the Scholarly Advisory Board of Magisterium AI. His research focuses on the ethics of emerging technologies, transhumanism, and AI. He is chief editor of Enhancement Fit for Humanity (Routledge, 2022) and a contributor to Emerging Issues in Catholic Bioethics (Springer, 2026).

Fr. Patrick Carter, O.S.B., is a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Clear Creek in Oklahoma and serves as General Procurator and Secretary of the Abbot Primate for the Benedictine Confederation in Rome. He holds a Licentiate in Thomistic Theology from the Angelicum, where he is completing doctoral studies on Aquinas’s treatment of justice and moral obligation. A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, his research bridges classical Aristotelian ethics with Catholic moral theology, with a focus on virtue, friendship, and the concept of the noble due.

Fr. Charbel Bteich is a Maronite priest from Lebanon who has served as the Vice General Secretary of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) since November 2024. Originally trained as a computer and telecommunications engineer, he later pursued theological studies in Rome, earning a license in Fundamental Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he is currently a doctoral candidate. A multilingual scholar specializing in theological paradoxes, his distinguished background includes serving as Procurator General and Rector of the Maronite Mariamite College in Rome.

Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Wipro — one of 16 in a company of 200,000 — and NASA Outstanding Achievement Award recipient. He began his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory processing SAR imagery from the Magellan mission to Venus, and later served as Senior HPC Scientist at RTI International. He has led AI and knowledge graph initiatives for Apple, T-Mobile, and SABIC, and holds a US patent for semantic test suite reduction. His expertise spans AI, high-performance computing, and computational modeling.

Financial lawyer turned digital missionary. Former managing partner of a Boston-based family office in Mexico, José Manuel left the business world to found Juan Diego Network, producing over 95 Catholic podcasts in Spanish, English, and Spanglish for Latino audiences. He leads Encuentro.com, a 26-year-old platform offering free Catholic theology courses accepted in 16+ countries. Appointed by Pope Francis as a voting delegate to the Synod of Bishops in 2023 and 2024, he co-founded the Evangelization Lab to advance digital Catholic outreach.

Cartographer, data scientist, and environmental activist. Molly is the founder of GoodLands, an organization mobilizing the Catholic Church to leverage its global landholdings for climate and social justice through GIS technology. She served as Chief Cartographer for the first unified digital map of the Catholic Church, premiered at the Vatican in 2016 in partnership with Esri. Named UN Young Champion of the Earth in 2019 and honored with the Sierra Club EarthCare Award in 2021.

Principal Software Engineer Lead at Microsoft with over 19 years of experience in Azure Edge technologies. Randy specializes in leveraging data to drive impactful insights, having led the Adaptive Cloud Data & Insights Team for Azure Arc and Azure Kubernetes managed services. An advocate for the intersection of faith and technology, he is actively involved in the CatholicOS initiative, has spoken on controlling AI’s disruption while forming hearts and minds, and is the author of the Byzantine Bible project.

Author, developer, and maker. Jeff is the founder of Midwestern Mac, LLC and a prominent voice in the open source community, with deep expertise in Linux, Ansible, Raspberry Pi, and Drupal. He authored “Ansible for DevOps” and “Ansible for Kubernetes,” and previously served as Technical Consultant at Ansible by Red Hat. A lifelong Catholic, Jeff founded the Open Source Catholic community for Catholic developers and served as Director of Web Development for the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. He shares his knowledge through his popular YouTube channels and blog.

Brings extensive expertise in performance, scalability, and systems architecture at Strava, working across a wide range of technologies including Linux, Ruby, Scala, and Java. Mike is a dedicated contributor to the Open Source Catholic community and the creator of ConfessIt, a Roman Catholic examination of conscience app for computers, tablets, and phones that he first released in 2012. A committed Catholic and open source advocate, he actively supports Catholic organizations through technology and shares his insights on software development through his blog.

Lawyer, technologist, and musician who has been coding since 1985 and practicing law since 2002. At Clio, Damien uses AI to extract and generate insights from over one billion legal documents, worldwide. At SALI and later FOLIO, Damien has built and expanded an ontology of over 18,000 legal tags — effectively standardizing legal data. He also co-founded the All the Music project, computationally composing over 471 billion melodies released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). During COVID, Damien founded Schola Diffusa, a virtual choir with singers across six continents.

Product-minded builder working at the intersection of web, AI, voice, and automation. Gabriel brings broad industry experience from Microsoft and Accenture, where he developed expertise in cloud architecture, digital strategy, and marketing technology. His work spans AI integration, full-stack web development, and developer tooling across multiple platforms and programming languages. Gabriel is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies to create practical, scalable solutions and actively explores the potential of large language models, voice AI, and open-source innovation to serve communities and organizations.

Mark Julius Banasihan is an IT consultant and Python developer based in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in AI governance and decision-support systems. He designs policy frameworks, evaluation criteria, and governance models for responsible technology adoption in regulated environments. His work includes building tools for translating applied AI research into auditable, decision-ready artifacts and developing enterprise solutions for project analytics and knowledge management. Mark brings deep expertise in bridging the gap between AI capabilities and institutional accountability, helping organizations implement governed, defensible decision-making processes.

Chris Treadaway is a seasoned technology executive and strategist based in Austin, Texas, specializing in AI and technology leadership. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at St. Theresa Catholic Church & School. Co-author of Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World, Chris has a background at Microsoft and as a founder of data-driven ventures. A recognized industry leader focusing on responsible AI innovation and ethics, he has served on developer councils for Facebook and Twitter and as a veteran SXSW Accelerator judge.