Sumner Hunt Lee

Sumner founded Fuse with a vision to deliver critically needed capabilities to the warfighter through application of Design Thinking processes. He leads the company by aligning the team to a Noble Cause of “Advancing warfighter capabilities with elegant, user-focused communications, networks, and software systems.” By combining the deep operational experience of veteran operators with exceptional engineering expertise inside Fuse, Sumner has assembled a team that successfully applies cutting-edge technology to real operational issues. The combined experience and expertise of the Fuse team have enabled successful transitions from research and development to products in the hands of the customer users.

Sumner started his career as a naval aviator. After graduating from the US Naval Academy, he graduated first in his class from flight school and flew H-46 helicopters through two deployments with the HC-11 “Gunbearers” out of San Diego. Later, he accepted a position leading the SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific airborne networking team. He was a plank owner of the Joint Tactical Edge Networking working group, and while at SPAWAR, he won three ONR Rapid Technology Transition projects, co-wrote the technical plan for the $70 million CABLE Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, and transitioned two airborne networking programs from projects into programs of record.