Natalia Sokolova invited to speak at Opal Group's Investing in Security 2026 in Washington, D.C. ACCESS Newswire 25 Aug 2026, 02:33 GMT+10 LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESS Newswire / August 24, 2026 / Natalia Sokolova, investor, entrepreneur and President & COO of Cytta Air, has been invited as an industry thought leader to participate in Opal Group's Investing in Security 2026 conference on October 5, 2026, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. Sokolova will speak on "Dual-Use Technologies: Where Defense Innovation Meets Commercial Opportunity," exploring the rapidly expanding intersection between national security requirements, private capital and technologies capable of serving both defense and commercial markets. The Investing in Security Forum brings together family offices and institutional investors to examine opportunities across the evolving defense and security landscape, including defense technology, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, dual-use innovation and emerging security solutions. "Some of the most important technologies being developed today are no longer confined to a single defense or commercial market," said Sokolova. "Dual-use technologies can address critical national-security requirements while also creating significant commercial applications. I look forward to discussing how investors can evaluate these opportunities, where private capital can accelerate innovation, and what it takes to move promising technology from development to scalable deployment." Sokolova brings the perspective of both an investor and operator to the discussion. Through her work with Verda Family Office and Cytta Air, she focuses on technologies at the intersection of safety, security, advanced manufacturing and dual-use applications. Her recent article, "The Drone Is No Longer the Product," illustrates one of the themes central to this shift. The article examines how recent federal procurement initiatives, new tariffs on certain foreign drones and components, and incentives for domestic production are changing the U.S. drone industry. It argues that competitive advantage is moving beyond the aircraft itself toward the complete mission stack-including components, communications, navigation, software, command-and-control and the domestic manufacturing capability required to produce and sustain these systems at scale. Cytta Air represents one example of this broader dual-use opportunity. The company is building a scalable, American-built drone manufacturing platform designed to integrate multiple drone configurations with U.S.-made components, proprietary command-and-control, resilient communications and local positioning technologies. Its approach reflects the convergence Sokolova will address in Washington: technologies driven by national-security requirements that can also create substantial applications across public safety, critical infrastructure and commercial markets. About Investing in Security 2026 Opal Group's Investing in Security Forum will take place October 5, 2026, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. The event brings together family offices and institutional investors to explore investment opportunities created by geopolitical change, technological innovation and national-resilience priorities across defense technology, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, dual-use innovation and emerging security solutions. About Natalia Sokolova Natalia Sokolova is an investor, entrepreneur and operator focused on safety, security, advanced manufacturing and dual-use technologies. She is President & COO of Cytta Air and a Principal of Verda Family Office, bringing together investment and operating perspectives across emerging technologies with defense, public-safety and commercial applications. Natalia Sokolova President & COO Cytta Corp./Cytta Air Corp. Nataliasokolova.com LinkedIn Direct: +1 415-301-6644 Website: www.cyttaair.com Email: [email protected]

What I learned at Opal's Palm Springs Summit: four leadership and L&D ideas worth taking home. Published: July 27, 2026 I went to Opal six weeks ago expecting to come back with a few useful ideas. What I did not expect was to sit through sessions and feel like each one was naming something I had been circling around in my own work but hadn't found the right words for yet. Opal Group's People Development Executive Summit brought senior L&D, talent, and leadership-development professionals to Palm Springs from June 14-16, 2026. Speakers included Neil Hunter, Chief Learning Officer at Deloitte Canada; Will Feng, Global Head of Learning & Leadership Development at Fabletics; and leaders from Microsoft, Block, Nuvei, and other organizations. The agenda ranged across AI, Gen Z, culture, people data, and the long game of making development stick. These are the ideas that stayed with me. If you work in L&D, lead a team, or shape how your organization develops people, I hope they give you a useful question to carry into your next meeting. | SESSION 01 | Neil HunterChief Learning Officer, Deloitte Canada | The only advantage AI can't commoditize. Neil Hunter opened with a question most people in the room had probably been asking themselves quietly for a while: if AI keeps getting better at doing what Leadership Edge do, what differentiates Leadership Edge? His answer was not what I expected. He did not talk about creativity or emotional intelligence in the abstract way those topics usually get handled. He went deeper: the human capacity to think adaptively, to learn in context, and to work through genuine ambiguity with other people is the only thing that will matter competitively once every organization has access to the same AI tools. Access to AI will level out, and when it does, advantage will come from the humans using it - and from how well those humans have been developed. As access to AI expands, the quality of your people and the depth of their development become more visible differentiators. For those of Leadership Edge in leadership development, that is clarifying. Human capability is part of business strategy: organizations need people who can frame a problem, question an output, read a room, and act when the playbook runs out. This maps directly to the work Leadership Edge do at Leadership Edge Live through programs such as Emotional Intelligence and Skillful Collaboration. More than just nice-to-have skills, these are the skills that hold their value precisely because AI cannot replicate them. | SESSION 02 | Will FengGlobal Head, Learning & Leadership Development, Fabletics | AI readiness starts with people. This was my favorite session. Will Feng talked about how Fabletics approached AI adoption, and the first thing he said was that they stopped calling it a technology rollout and started treating it as a culture change. "We bought the licenses" is not a culture strategy. The distinction sounds small, but it isn't. Organizations that frame AI adoption as a technology problem focus on tools, access, and training people to use specific platforms. Organizations that frame it as a culture problem focus on whether their people are curious, adaptive, and willing to keep learning when the tools keep changing. The second approach builds something that lasts; the first builds a capability that goes obsolete. Will introduced a "Superlearner" framework for building readiness at three connected levels: individual, team, and organization. Each level asks a practical version of the same question: what helps people stay curious, learn faster, and keep adapting together? THE TAKEAWAY Genuine AI readiness grows in a culture where people want to keep learning, feel safe trying new approaches, and trust one another enough to adjust when an experiment misses. The idea of a Superlearner - someone who actively accelerates their own learning - felt familiar. The most effective people I have worked with do not wait for the next course to update their thinking; they look for feedback, test assumptions, and keep moving. That is also why live, facilitator-led learning has a distinct role. Real-time interaction, feedback, and practice create conditions a video library alone rarely provides. | PANEL 03 | Steven Astrein Guidde Ashley Zucchet Logan Nuvei Johnny Stoneburner Block Patrick Carrion MCM Worldwide | How AI training programs can make it past day 90. The panel named a failure pattern they called "The 90-Day Cliff." Here is the pattern: an organization launches an AI-enabled training program. The first few weeks bring energy, participation, and positive feedback. By day 60 or 90, novelty fades, old habits return, and a program that still exists on paper has stopped changing how people work. The panel traced that fade to design built around launch energy, weak links to real work, and measurement focused on completion or satisfaction instead of behavior and business impact. The fix is better design from the start, specifically with Day 91 in mind. What will the program ask people to do then? Which real decisions will it support? What observable behavior will tell Leadership Edge the learning transferred? A program that gets people through the content is not the same as a program that changes how people work. Most organizations are measuring the first thing and calling it the second. The panelists also highlighted short, subject-matter-expert-led content that appears close to the moment of need. Compact resources can be easier to revisit, practice, and apply than a single long course. That aligns with a durable finding from learning science: distributing practice over time generally supports longer-term retention better than massed exposure, especially when learners retrieve and apply what they know. The point is to give people repeated chances to use the learning in context. | PANEL 04 | Kirsten Moorefield Cloverleaf Mary Carroll GDT John "Jay" Longowa Forward Air | You cannot develop people you do not understand. The final session I want to highlight focused on a familiar gap: organizations can collect behavioral insights and talent signals faster than managers can turn them into useful action. Many organizations already have engagement surveys, performance reviews, assessment results, and retention signals. The opportunity is to bring those insights into the daily decisions managers make with and about their people. The panel identified three conditions for closing the gap: * - Data needs to appear in the flow of work. * - Insights need plain language tied to real decisions. * - Managers need confidence that honest development conversations will be handled with appropriate care, and not as surveillance. The organizations actually moving the needle on talent development are the ones where managers feel equipped and safe enough to use what they know about their people to have better conversations, not just to fill out forms. What i'm carrying Forward. Two themes stayed with me. First, the organizations winning on people development right now are the ones with the clearest philosophy about what development is for, and the discipline to build programs around that philosophy rather than around what is easiest to deliver. Second, AI is raising the stakes for both technical fluency AND human capability. Analytical thinking, adaptability, leadership, collaboration, empathy, and active listening continue to matter alongside AI skills. Organizations that develop both are better positioned to turn new tools into useful work. I left Opal with a clearer sense of why its work at Leadership Edge Live matters, and a sharper set of questions about how to help learning land more deeply and last longer. That is about as good as a conference can do. If one of these questions is alive in your organization - how to build AI readiness, make learning stick, or help managers lead with better information - I would enjoy comparing notes. Bring me the messy version. Bring Leadership Edge the challenge you're navigating. In 30 minutes, Jonathan will learn what you're working through, explain how the Leadership Edge Live team may be able to help, and follow up with an introduction to the right expert. Jonathan Fuentes. 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