Vidya Spandana is the founder of Contraband, a collective of senior executives who advise leaders through high-stakes transitions. She brings 25 years across Fortune 100, startups, government, and nonprofits — building digital ventures, products, teams, and the systems that hold them together.

 

As Global GM at Nike, Vidya ran Valiant Labs, the company's digital innovation unit. She held P&L responsibility for a portfolio of 35+ ventures. She led teams that took Nike Refurbished from concept to $100M in annual revenue — saving 2 million pairs of shoes from landfill. Her teams validated six new business models with $250M ARR potential each. She led a $250M lift integrating community features across Nike.com, SNKRS, NRC, and NTC.

 

Before Nike, she served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow under the Obama Administration. She created five projects at the Millennium Challenge Corporation proving open data could drive economic growth in impoverished regions. She drove a $21.8M MCC-PEPFAR partnership and led the agency to a #1 ranking as most transparent donor. Her data work with Palantir informed how the Senate Foreign Relations Committee appropriates $23B+ in foreign aid.

 

She co-founded DMV.org as an undergraduate. Built it to serve 110 million Americans annually. Inc. 500, #129. 391% growth in three years.

 

She co-founded New Knowledge, an AI cybersecurity startup tracking disinformation. Grew from zero to 600 users in two months and $4M+ in revenue in two years. Customers: United Nations, DARPA, Google. Accepted twice into Techstars.

 

Vidya led strategic partnerships for Ushahidi, a humanitarian technology nonprofit in Nairobi, co-developing a model for launching new startup ecosystems in East Africa.

She has served on the Oregon Innovation Council (governor-appointed), where she championed restructuring of a $17M portfolio into a thesis-driven venture fund. She served as Vice President of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Foundation board and President of the Code Scouts board. She has mentored 100+ founders through Techstars, Nike+ Accelerator, Jaguar Land Rover, Portland Incubator Experiment, Portland Seed Fund, R/GA Leap, and ASTIA.

Speaker: TEDx, CME Group, the White House, American Council for Technology. Co-host of Partially Derivative, a top-ranked data science podcast with 50,000+ monthly downloads.