Background & CV
Doug Liles, M.S. — applied-AI & GovTech founder building fast, ethical, and auditable systems for special districts, local government, and the public good. Founder & CEO of the Good Samaritan Institute (GoodSam.ai) and founder of Good Combinator, an accelerator for mission-driven AI builders; elected Chairman of the South Walton Mosquito Control District.
Three decades building companies and homes on Florida's Emerald Coast and an earlier chapter in cancer-research science feed a single throughline: caring less about what a technologycould do in a lab and more about what it actually does in the real world.
For headshots, bios, and media inquiries, see the press kit or contact directly.
Where I build and advise — applied AI and GovTech, held to one standard: fast, ethical, and auditable.
A connected family of AI ventures, founded or led across civic governance, environmental stewardship, education, research commercialization, and community — plus Good Combinator's Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) certification, which trains engineers to translate real problems into shipped value. See the full ecosystem →
The Good Samaritan Institute — a nonprofit AI institute applying artificial intelligence to community services, stewardship, and the public good.
Visit site →An accelerator and resource hub for mission-driven AI founders — backing builders whose AI is fast, ethical, and auditable.
Visit site →Civic and govtech AI — transparent, auditable decision support for local governments and special districts.
Visit site →The commercial front door for DistrictOps by FL5 — auditable operations software for special districts and the public sector.
Visit site →Environmental monitoring AI — sensor-driven insight for watersheds, stormwater, and coastal ecosystems.
Visit site →Education AI — practical tools and curricula that help learners and educators put AI to work responsibly.
Visit site →Research commercialization — moving breakthroughs from lab to market with AI-assisted licensing and partnership workflows.
Visit site →Applied AI content and case studies — what actually works when AI leaves the demo and meets the real world.
Visit site →A private Santa Rosa Beach campus for weddings, retreats, and group stays — and the home of founder co-living and “Escape to Create” AI sessions.
Visit site →One of the few AI founders who also sits on the government side of the table — an elected special district official building the same auditable, transparent tools he advocates for in office.
Jan 2021 – present · elected 2020
Leads board governance for an independent Florida special district. Champions funded, measurable, and transparent stormwater management across South Walton, and keeps an open public record of comments, regulatory filings, and correspondence.
ongoing
Community advocacy to protect the 30A corridor — including public comment on stormwater and ERP 62-330 compliance.
FASD Annual Conference · June 9, 2026 · Orlando, FL
Delivered session on a practical 90-day roadmap for responsible operations automation in special districts. Verified — high confidence.
View →Framework talk & deck
Why adoption — not invention — is the hard part of getting new technology into real communities and institutions.
View →Podcast & media
Conversations on applied AI for communities, government, and nonprofits — putting the “AI for good” thesis into practice. On Spotify and YouTube.
Speaking topics: applied AI for government and nonprofits · AI-for-good in practice · agent reliability and evaluation · how new technology actually gets adopted in real communities.
Newest first — each opens the full piece on Medium.
A new quantization method cuts LLM inference memory roughly 6x with negligible accuracy loss — and why efficient algorithms may matter more than the biggest data centers.
Jan 2026
Design patterns for orchestrating reliable, multi-step AI agent workflows.
A technical guide to the four core skills for building a career in neuromorphic computing.
Using AI as a study partner instead of an answer machine — an AI-assisted Feynman technique, progressive dialogue, and a plan-do-check-act loop that makes the learning stick.
Where immunotherapy actually stands in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma — PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibition, and why the benefit so far reaches only a small, biomarker-defined group of patients.
Also: Columnist, Florida Builder Magazine (2017–present). Full index at dougliles.com/writing.
The three decades of building, business, and research that the applied-AI work is built on.
Doug began in the life sciences as a research assistant and scholar in medical microbiology, and through the Good Samaritan Institute worked in cancer biology, oncology, and nanomedicine in the 2000s — taking part in programs of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and the National Cancer Institute's Translational Research Working Group. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.