Dom Lebel

• Bachelor of Arts, Justice Studies, Royal Roads University

The program teaches leaders how the defence customer thinks. Dom was that customer — and then the public servant, and then the founder.

Building defence and dual-use ventures takes someone who has stood inside the institutions that buy, regulate and field them. Dom Lebel has spent his career doing exactly that. He served 23 years in the Royal Canadian Navy, including seven with the Naval Tactical Operations Group, first as a Senior Instructor and then as Operations Chief leading specialized naval operations — work that taught him how disciplined planning, clear command and practitioner-led design turn intent into outcomes that hold under pressure.

He carried the same approach into government as Manager of the International Capacity Building Division at the Canadian Coast Guard, where he built and led programs that transferred real capability to partner nations rather than creating dependency.

Today he is Founder and CEO of SPHEIRA, a veteran-owned and led training and capacity-building company in Ottawa, and Chief Operating Officer at SeafarerAI, which builds AI for port security and environmental monitoring. Because he has worked across all three sectors — military, government and private enterprise — Dom brings the program a working understanding of how they combine to move a dual-use idea from concept through deployment to full implementation.