A team united by a shared conviction: technology should empower, not extract. Combined decades of experience across cybersecurity, AI/ML, neuromorphic hardware, and full-stack development.
Jamal brings vision, leadership, and a deep understanding of the intersection between technology and human rights to Digital Disconnections. As CEO, he sets the strategic direction for the company and champions the mission that software should serve its users — not surveil them.
With a background in computer science and a passion for consumer advocacy, Jamal ensures every product decision aligns with the company's founding principles: privacy by default, no subscriptions, no ads, no exceptions.
Cassidy started on a monochrome monitor with floppy disks, writing BASIC at the age of six. A lifelong hacker with a real-world penetration testing background in operational cybersecurity, he's been running and breaking servers since before Apache existed — in the era of Archie and Veronica, when a Sun Microsystems "super" computer was his window into the world.
With 20+ years of hands-on experience across penetration testing, infrastructure security, and full-stack development, Cassidy's red-team operational security assessments have led to real-world awareness of previously unconsidered threats — resulting in innovative defense mechanisms in physical access defense, smarter detection systems, and policy overhauls across industries.
As a lifelong hobbyist turned professional across coding, technical support, and physical infrastructure, Cassidy possesses a rare understanding of the tech world across many different dimensions. His career spans data migration at Hollywood Video during its final pivot, technical consulting building CRM systems and security infrastructure, and now leading the technology vision at Digital Disconnections.
Eric is a neuromorphic engineer specializing in device, analog, AMS, and MEMS design for both IC and PCB applications. Driven by a passion for innovation at the intersection of AI, hardware, and biology, he thrives on building ecosystems that empower multidisciplinary teams to achieve extraordinary outcomes.
His expertise spans the entire hardware development lifecycle — from custom process and device design to fabrication, metrology, and analog/mixed-signal circuit implementation. He is equally adept at crafting software solutions in Python, MATLAB, C, and Verilog to control and analyze complex systems.
As Principal Engineer at Light for the People, Eric led advanced semiconductor device manufacturing and AI/ML hardware solutions. Previously, as Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Shoreline Community College, he developed cutting-edge curricula integrating AI robotics and neuromorphic circuit design — fostering the next generation of engineers and scientists.
Eric's career has been defined by a commitment to open-source principles and a dedication to making advanced technology accessible. At Digital Disconnections, he brings the hardware expertise that makes truly on-device AI processing possible.
Dr. Heather Gorr is an AI and machine learning expert with deep roots in computational science, data analytics, and scientific research. She brings over a decade of experience at MathWorks — the company behind MATLAB — where she served as Product Manager for the MATLAB platform with a focus on data analytics, machine learning, and big data.
At MathWorks, Heather guided product strategy through market research, requirements gathering, and technical content development. She created machine learning training courses, delivered hands-on customer training in MATLAB programming, statistics, optimization, parallel computing, and financial applications, and kept internal teams informed on emerging technology developments.
Heather earned her PhD in Materials Science Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, where her dissertation — "Lysozyme Pattern Formation and Recognition in Evaporating Droplets" — involved developing software to predict fluid concentrations from images using computer vision and machine learning techniques. She also holds an MS in Physics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she modeled optical dispersion relations in semiconductors.
A published researcher in peer-reviewed journals including Colloids and Surfaces B, former adjunct physics faculty, and former Teaching Fellow in engineering analysis, Heather combines rigorous scientific methodology with practical product management experience. At Digital Disconnections, she architects the AI/ML models that make on-device intelligence possible.
Decades of combined experience in cybersecurity, AI/ML, neuromorphic hardware, and full-stack development — all pointed at one goal: software that serves its users.