Our Team
Founded by operators with decades of experience across defense, cyber intelligence, technology operations, and global markets, Blackrail Group brings true operational precision to venture and growth investing.
Our team has led mission-critical programs, advised governments, and scaled technologies shaping the future of resilience, delivering long-term value for our partners and investors in an increasingly complex world.
Oni Kabir
General Partner
Oni Kabir brings over 30 years of operational expertise in enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, risk management, and business strategy. He has served as the Chief Risk Officer for the City of New York’s financial systems, overseeing the management and security of over $115 billion in annual transactions.
His leadership extends to roles as CEO of GSC Assets, a Crisis Alpha Hedge Fund; Managing Partner at Argon Holdings, a boutique private equity firm focused on the defense and oil sectors; and CEO of Sora Defense, a cyber military intelligence and communications platform.With experience as both a founder and an enterprise customer, he provides invaluable guidance to early-stage companies, helping them achieve operational and strategic success in the enterprise markets.
Clare John Fairfield
General Partner
Clare Fairfield is Chairman of the Venture Capital Institute, a global venture capital and innovation development and education organization established in 1974, and a founding General Partner and Managing Director of Concerto Advisors, a diversified early-stage venture investment and advisory firm.
He has 30+ years of entrepreneurial experience, including developing and operating venture funds, founding and operating companies, developing nationally recognized research university entrepreneurial programs, and driving innovation ecosystem development in the US and globally. He maintains offices in the US, Australia, Europe, and China and speaks globally on the topics of entrepreneurial innovation and venture capital.
William V. Parker
Executive Director
William Van Rensalier Parker is the Principal of Global Engagement Solutions, LLC and Director of International Operations for the Venture Capital Institute, focusing on identifying disruptive technologies and bringing them to market. He retired after 31 years of foreign service with the U.S. Department of State at the rank of Minister-Counselor (Equivalent to a Major General).
He has accumulated a vast array of contacts critical to national security interests at the highest levels of government and the private sector. His foreign service and other postings include: Foreign Policy Advisor (POLAD), United States Strategic Command; New Delhi, India; the U.S. Mission to NATO, Brussels, Belgium; Davao, Philippines; Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and temporary duty assignments in Qatar, West Africa and numerous others.
Gloria Cervera Santamaría
Director of Communications
Gloria Cervera Santamaría is a communications manager with experience across the U.S. and Europe, working within early-stage venture capital focused on fintech, crypto, and cybersecurity. She began her career as an analyst specializing in asset tokenization and fractional ownership models, with a particular focus on real estate acquisitions.
She later supported fintech companies in assessing market fit and refining B2C positioning, translating complex technologies into clear, market-ready narratives. Most recently, Gloria has worked closely with cybersecurity firms to evaluate market penetration and develop value-driven communications tailored to C-suite executives.
Gloria holds a BA in Communication, Marketing, and Public Relations and a Master’s degree in Fintech, Blockchain, and Financial Markets.
Hardik Mehta
Executive Advisor
Hardik Mehta is a global leader in cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and enterprise risk management with over two decades of experience driving digital transformation, risk innovation, and regulatory alignment across Fortune 100 organizations.
He currently leads the Global Risk and Regulatory Compliance Program at JPMorgan Chase, where he is responsible for modernizing cyber, technical and operational regulatory programs at enterprise scale across 40 countries with varied privacy, regulatory and security requirements. His mandate includes leveraging AI and integrated product processes to embed compliance natively into the engineering lifecycle—creating a proactive, resilient, and transparent compliance ecosystem. He is also responsible for incubation program of global AI start-up vendors for safety, resiliency and agility in Financial services sector for FS-ISAC.
Hardik’s career includes senior leadership roles at PwC, where he led risk consulting practice across 10 APAC countries, as well as key positions at EY, RSM, and ADP, focusing on risk strategy, engineering integration, and regulatory transformation.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai, a Master’s inComputer Science with a specialization in Cybersecurity from Stevens Institute of Technology, and an MBA in Finance and Risk Management from NYU Stern School of Business.
David S. Germroth
Executive Advisor
David S. Germroth is a seasoned leader in the defense, space, and intelligence sectors. He is recognized for facilitating complex business-to-business, business-to-government, and government-to-government project development across the United States, Europe, Japan, and FYVE nations. With a particular focus on the highly competitive sectors of defense, secure communications, and geospatial intelligence, Mr. Germroth provides strategic guidance in international business development and government relations.
Mr. Germroth brings over 30 years of extensive experience to his role, having previously served as a principal at PACE Global Solutions. He was also the Vice President for Defense and Geo-intelligence programs at Airbus GmbH and Tesat Spacecom, where he played a pivotal role in advancing critical defense and intelligence initiatives on a global scale. Throughout his career, he has been instrumental in representing multinational companies, as well as national security and trade organizations in Europe and Asia, before key U.S. government bodies, including Congress, the White House, the Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as various international governments and defense and intelligence agencies.
A United States Air Force veteran, Mr. Germroth specialized as a German Linguist, HUMINT specialist, and War Readiness Material expert.
Vikrant Arora
Executive Advisor
Vikrant Arora is an industry-recognized and award-winning cybersecurity executive with 20+ years’ experience establishing first-time enterprise cybersecurity programs, building high-performing teams, driving unprecedented risk awareness, and expertly responding to security incidents and threats to business continuity.
Over the past decade, Vikrant has worked as a CISO for HSS, a world leader in Orthopedics, and NYC Health + Hospitals, the nation's largest healthcare delivery system. Some of his accomplishments include: Maintaining a security posture among the top 10% of cyber insurance premium customers in the industry, developing and implementing a multiyear security and compliance program for the largest public hospital system in the country, and leading a $30M, 5-year data center defense project involving the design, implementation, and maintenance of a multi-vendor zero-trust security architecture.
Vikrant has served on the Board of the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Security as well as Customer Advisory Boards for ForgeRock, Symantec, and Wiz. He is also a featured contributor for Fox News, Healthcare IT News, and SC Media. A prolific speaker, he has delivered keynotes to Gartner, Argyle, Health Impact, and Evanta, the latter of which he is a member of the Evanta Global CISO community.
Toan Huynh
Executive Advisor
Toan Huynh is a former cloud tech founder and seasoned digital transformation leader with over two decades of experience in private equity and venture capital. She has spent 24+ years working with and investing in enterprise technology and services companies, with a practitioner’s focus on innovations in AI, data, cloud, quantum computing, and blockchain.
Toan has served as a US-based Partner at Information VP, an early-stage North American technology fund, and as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for global financial institutions, where she worked closely with enterprise technology portfolio companies and helped launch new fintech products. She is an Operating Advisor for several growth funds, a global bank, and an investment bank, focusing on operational excellence, go-to-market strategies, and product development.