How an industry rant gave way to a rising star(tup): A fireside chat with Expel COO Yanek Korff

Yanek Korff has served in information technology or security roles for over 20 years. He started out as a student help desk tech in a musty library basement in college. Today he’s a co-founder and COO of Expel, a DC-area cybersecurity company that creates space for its customers to do what they love about security, even if that means not thinking about it at all.

Yanek began his professional career as a systems administrator at Bell Atlantic and then Cigital. He moved on to Aol where he transitioned into a management role and eventually became responsible for much of Aol’s security infrastructure. In 2010, he joined Mandiant to build a new managed services business line to help customers mitigate the impact of security breaches conducted by state-sponsored attackers.

Yanek graduated with a Computer Science degree from William and Mary, a Masters in the Management of Information Technology from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and was the principal author for Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security, published by O’Reilly.

Yanek lives with his family in Vienna, Virginia with three dogs and as many fish and corals as he can fit into a 300 gallon saltwater aquarium. When he’s not fully engaged with Expel business, he’s likely on vacation or playing video games. Because he’s apparently still ten years old on the inside.

Shaq Dastur is a managing director at Riveron in Washington DC and is responsible for relationship development and account management.

He has 15 years of experience in program and project management in both accounting and technology. Shaq takes a creative and thoughtful approach to solving clients’ problems with his unique blend of technology and financial expertise. He has worked on everything from custom web application design and implementation, web portal design, and information management, to analytics, data integration, performance management, and budgeting and planning. His industry experience includes healthcare, telecommunications, hospitality, government contracting as well as federal civilian and defense contracting.

In addition to his business degree, Shaq also has a Bachelors of Arts in music for conducting. He is thoroughly committed to the DC community and volunteers with So Others Might Eat and the MS Society. Shaq joined Riveron after working in various capacities with Resources Global Professionals, Deloitte, BearingPoint, and American Management Systems. Shaq is also the current President of ACG Maryland for 2020/2021.