Jason Rogers

Rogers is the CEO of Invary, a cybersecurity company focused on the difference between assuming our systems are secure and being able to prove it. Invary verifies that the technology everything else depends on is actually intact, which matters more as organizations put more of their business, and their AI, onto infrastructure they can't afford to take on faith. Its work builds on NSA-licensed technology and a MITRE attestation standard Invary co-authored.

A key accomplishment for Rogers was bringing high-tech work to Kansas that people assumed only happened on the coasts. As an executive at Matterport, a Silicon Valley company, he built a team of 20 in the Lawrence region that helped drive the company to IPO, right alongside the teams in the Valley. Earlier I moved roughly 50 software jobs here from Motorola, and brought Lowe's IoT group to Lawrence, which helped seed the Alarm.com office that followed. Each one proved the same thing: the talent is here, and Kansas delivers. His role co-founding Invary in Lawrence with Dr. Perry Alexander at the KU Innovation Park is the fullest expression of that, a company doing research with the NSA and co-authoring a security standard with MITRE, built here at home.

Rogers helps people through both product and opportunity, which allows him to bring what he learned building startups on both coasts back to where his home. With Invary, that vision is very concrete: the same technology we use to help defend the NSA and the Department of the Navy should protect a rural hospital in western Kansas just as well.

A fifth-generation Kansan with roots in farming, Kansas, Rogers has traveled all over the world and never felt at home anywhere else. For him, it's the pragmatism and the friendliness of people here, communities that actually show up for each other, and a cost of living and pace that leave real room for family.