TEAM
Small by design. Every seat serves our partner organizations and the households they reach, and answers to the Charter. Open roles are below.
FOUNDER
FOUNDER · CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Dimitri is the founder and chief executive officer of Zion Datum Public Benefit Corporation. The combination of a structured legal career in affordable-housing finance and an earlier operating-side background in startups makes him uniquely suited to the problem Zion is built to solve, a consumer-controlled record, consent, and eligibility infrastructure for the 56 million U.S. households the existing benefits and identity systems were never designed to serve.
Dimitri practiced for six years at a Washington, D.C. mission-driven affordable-housing law firm specializing nationally in the federal and state tax-credit, finance, and regulatory regimes that underpin the field in the United States. His practice centered on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program under Internal Revenue Code Section 42, the HUD regulatory framework, and the IRS rules governing tax-exempt organizations. He represented nonprofit developers, community development corporations, public housing authorities, syndicators, and tax-credit investors in the structuring and closing of affordable-housing transactions. Before the firm, he served as a fellow at Bread for the City, a D.C. nonprofit legal clinic, representing tenants in redevelopment efforts and as a policy advocate.
Before law, Dimitri worked for the Ohio state government and in public-interest campaigning, and, directly prior to law school, at a procurement-infrastructure startup focused on rural and underserved communities in the local-infrastructure RFP space. That operating-side experience grounds his approach to Zion’s product, go-to-market, and team-building work in a way a purely legal career could not.
The Ohio State University, BA, 2015
Case Western Reserve University School of Law, JD, 2020
Bar admissions: Ohio · Washington, D.C.
REACH · d.mcdaniel at zion-pbc dot com · contact form · press inquiries via the press kit.
TEAM
PARTNERSHIPS & OPERATIONS LEAD
Phillip leads partnerships and operations for Zion. He connects community organizations to the households they serve, helps those households find their way to the trusted institutions already working in their community, and keeps the corporate operations behind that work running cleanly.
He comes from nearly a decade of operations work across international development and corporate services, supporting management of $500M+ in total project funds while coordinating vendor, contract, and compliance systems for organizations including Diligent Corporation and Chemonics International. He holds a Master’s in International Relations from the University of Groningen.
That background, built on both sides of the relationship, running the programs and operations that deliver the work and coordinating the partners who make it possible, is exactly the combination this role at Zion requires.
TEAM
DEVELOPMENT LEAD · GRANTS & PHILANTHROPIC PARTNERSHIPS
Joey de St. Aubin leads development for Zion: building the grant and philanthropic partnerships that keep the core product free for households. He comes from the public transit sector, where he spent nearly four years as a proposal writer at Keolis North America drafting winning bids responsible for more than $1 billion in new contract revenue. Earlier roles span govtech and public policy. He holds a B.S. in Public Policy, Planning & Economic Development from Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. His mix of high-stakes proposal writing and public-sector fluency maps directly to Zion’s mission: making the case to the funders and institutions that stand behind our community partners.
02 · TRUST ADVISORY BOARD
The TAB is composed of three to five members who are independent of the company, not employees, officers, or directors, and reflect diverse geographic, demographic, professional, and lived-experience perspectives. The founding three are target-confirmed by Q4 2026 / Q1 2027.
SEAT ONE
A founder, scholar, or operator with deep experience in consumer-data rights, civic-tech governance, or mission-locked corporate structures, a Code for America, 18F, or USDS alum, a privacy-rights leader, or a digital-rights scholar.
SEAT TWO
A leader from the federal-program ecosystem with substantive expertise in the benefits and identity systems Zion’s product addresses, a former HUD, HHS, or USDA program leader, or a long-tenured benefits-policy researcher.
SEAT THREE
A leader with lived experience as a member of the ALICE-Threshold population Zion serves, and operational experience in community-based organizations, a community-health-center director, a recovery-community leader, or a workforce-development-program leader.
03 · OPEN HIRES
Sets technical direction and owns the pilot release: migration review, row-level security, pre-deploy security tests, and on-call while the first pilot in the DMV region is live.
Ships the daily pilot flows (consent grant and revoke, staff-assisted onboarding, phone sign-in, partner caseload) web-first, then iOS.
Owns the LP Account data model, the consent and member-visible audit architecture, and the integration and pilot-metrics design.
Owns member and partner surfaces for a pilot serving older adults: large text, high contrast, screen readers, plain language. WCAG 2.2 AA required.
Gets pilot partners live: staff onboarding, workflow mapping, and consent-safe exports and CRM connectors, from scoping through go-live.
Owns the design system continuity between mobile, web, and partner workspace. Accessibility-first. WCAG 2.2 AA literacy required.
Embedded with pilot partner orgs. Member co-design, intake-to-care field testing. One seat requires EN/ES bilingual fluency.
Part-time now, full-time as the pilot grows. Owns the consent threat model, independent review of access-control changes, and pilot incident response.
