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Our Founder: Dana Cottrell, CEO and Principal Architect

Dantech CEO: Dana Cottrell

Dana Cottrell has provided key strategic solutions for critical applications installed at NASA, American Chemical Society, American Association of Medical Colleges, US Department of Education, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FINRA, The College Board, AARP, Harvard University, Lockheed Martin, DC Government, Foundation Medicine, Modivcare, and Takeda.

Between 1996 - 2009, her efforts were focused on specialty financial applications. The financial applications required a wealth of knowledge in proven infrastructure and software technologies, financial industry regulations, mortgage industry capital markets, mortgage industry loan servicing, mortgage industry securitization, financial accounting standards, SOX compliance, and, most importantly, high volume, transactional data integration solutions.

Dana's financial data integration solution proficiencies include Netezza, Thompson Reuters Eikon, Tibco, Linux, Oracle, Caplin, IBM, and Streambase using languages of C++, Python, and Java and protocols of TCP and UDP. The most recent solutions were several successful event-based, SOA enterprise solutions that leveraged vendor supplied and/or custom developed APIs and web services.

Since 2009, her efforts have been focused on Cloud and AI infrastructure, applications, and services, particularly with Amazon Web Services. Dana has led numerous Cloud initiatives, completed multiple large scale migration efforts, has re-engineered and transformed legacy platforms to fully leverage cloud capability, has replatformed large scale data and storage solutions, has implemented full scale business continuity/disaster recovery efforts, has architected new applications and business solutions, has implemented critical cloud automation tools, and has mentored in the areas of Data Analytics, Security, Migration, DevOps, Operations, CI/CD, Architecture, and Design. Dana has obtained multiple AWS certifications, including the advanced AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification.

Dana earned her bachelor's degree in computer science and math from the University of Maryland, where she was first exposed to the significance of critical architectural solutions while interning for NASA at the acclaimed Goddard Space Flight Center. This internship significantly influenced her decision to obtain a Master Degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. Her Master's emphasis was on supervised and unsupervised Machine Learning.

Dana was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, the oldest and most selective collegiate honor society in the United States for her undergraduate and graduate accomplishments. She has been awarded various certifications from leading technology companies like Amazon Web Services IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle while also being recognized by groups like ITIL, The Open Group, Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance, and Project Management Institute.

Dana is a member of the Technology Advisory Group for MicroFinance Information Exchange, Inc.