Your Instructors
David Nelson
Executive Director, FoundersForge
David Nelson is the Executive Director of FoundersForge, a nonprofit entrepreneur center located in Johnson City, East Tennessee State University Faculty in the Entrepreneurship Program, and a member of the Johnson City Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Through FoundersForge, David provides free mentorship to startups in Northeast Tennessee and across the country as they validate their startup ideas, launch, scale, and negotiate successful exits from their startup ventures. David is a 5-time tech entrepreneur with experience spanning across healthcare, software, and agencies. His most successful venture, Duffek Mobile, specialized in developing mobile apps and dynamic websites. He has built over 87 products that were released to market, including data visualization for the VA that was used in Whitehouse briefings and a healthcare app that was used in the Olympics. As tools for AI development came out, David saw an opportunity to empower entrepreneurs and developers to build products and streamline operations in their existing jobs. AI is truly a force multiplier and David looks forward to teaching you the tools from the ground up so you can build anything in the future.
Jason A. Oglesby
Founder, Ergon Insights
Jason A. Oglesby is a technology leader and AI transformation strategist with 30+ years of software development experience. As the former CTO of Rev.io, a leading SaaS company, he led a 70+ person IT organization through a full-scale AI transformation where they created more software over his last 12 months than they had completed in the previous decade, all by embedding AI-first practices across every layer of the engineering process. Now running Ergon Insights, Jason consults with organizations on practical AI adoption, coaches technology leaders, and builds AI-powered software solutions using AI-first development practices and tools as core accelerators. Jason holds an MS in Business Analytics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and brings deep experience from leadership roles at IQVIA, Healthcare Data Solutions, and other technology companies. A veteran of the Army National Guard and a leadership practitioner grounded in Extreme Ownership principles, he's passionate about building people up alongside building technology. Based in Johnson City, Tennessee, Jason is committed to growing the Tri-Cities region into a technology hub, making Forge Academy a natural extension of that mission: equipping everyday problem-solvers with AI tools to build real software solutions in just six weeks.