VT-ARC's Isabel Zaru-Roque Coaches SparkTank 2022 Finalists

Zaru-Roque (right) giving pointers to a SparkTank finalist.

With the United States Air Force’s (USAF) SparkTank 2022’s finalists announced, and “Fan Favorite” voting underway, it’s time for the chosen Spark Tank innovators to hone their pitches before the SparkTank event on March 4, 2022.

The USAF SparkTank team, as part of a Partnership Intermediary Agreement between Air Force Office of Science and Research (AFOSR), AFWERX and the Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation (VT-ARC), enlisted the help of VT-ARC’s Isabel Zaru-Roque, MPH, as a pitch coach for the competition. Ms Zaru-Roque has been supporting the SparkTank team for the past two years and has been a valuable part of the team as both a pitch coach and project manager.

This year’s finalists know their groundbreaking ideas backwards and forwards and with a strong pitch coach, the participants’ can put a brilliant polish on the presentations and clearly convey their impact to the Air Force.

“Focusing on details like body language, and voice tone and volume ensures presenters put their best foot forward. Watching the Airmen and Guardians grow their pitches has been an honor,” said Zaru-Roque. 

SparkTank is the Department of the Air Force’s annual, high-profile, competition to celebrate Guardian and Airmen’s innovative ideas for solving hard problems outside of individual roles, organizations, and silos. The competition encourages intrapreneurship, helps retains innovators, and potentially speeds up adoption of emerging technologies. The best pitches bring game-changing impact to our Air Force and Space Force to cost-effectively modernize, improve readiness to meet evolving threats, and increase efficiency.