Starting in 2006, he served as a project engineering manager for BarDyne, Inc., a fluid power engineering and consultant firm based in Stillwater, OK that originated from the Fluid Power Research Center. During this time, he worked with organizations that spanned multiple industries, to include Walt Disney Imagineering, supporting their California Screamin'roller coaster in Anaheim, CA, and General Dynamics Amphibious Systems in Woodbridge, VA on the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program, developed for the United States Marine Corps. In 2009, Stroup relocated to Washington, D.C. to serve as a subject-matter expert defense contractor for the Department of DefenseCBRN defense portfolio, specifically on aerospace platform integration efforts, to include the Joint Strike Fighter program. Mid 2011 he joined the Department of Defense civilian workforce through an insourcing initiative, where his roles and responsibilities shifted towards supporting the military medical community and the development of vaccines and drugs as medical countermeasures for the United States Armed Forces. His final position was an Informatics SME and Integration Lead on a White HousePresidential Executive Order initiative called Biosurveillance. From October 2012 to March 2015, he served as the CEO of an internet security tech startup called CommonKey that provided a cloud-based identity and access management solution for small and medium enterprises through a software as a service management dashboard paired with a browser extension that provided single sign-on functionality. In June 2014 and until January 2015, Stroup became a co-founder of MegaBots, Inc. where he focused on fluid power design, fabrication, and business development and operations. In March 2015 he became the Director of Product and Technology for the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows, which is a competitive fellowship program that pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on solutions that aim to deliver significant results in condensed timelines. Afterwards, he transitioned into the financial services industry when he served as an Entrepreneur in Residence within the Global Information Security organization at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, leading a Technology Strategy and Business Enablement team. Stroup currently serves as the founder and CEO of LVRG, an AI-driven vendor relationship management platform that streamlines enterprise-wide external engagements. Additionally, he serves as an Advisory Board Member at Exygy, Entrepreneur in Residence at Oklahoma State University, Mentor at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator and Technology and Information Security Advisor for Human Rights Watch.
TV career
In 2013, Stroup appeared in the first season of Discovery Channel's reality TV series , an engineering competition consisting of 10 contestants from across the country, which aired from May to June 2013. Each week contestants were put to the test, competing against each other in two teams to design, build, and deliver solutions to difficult engineering problems. He survived six out of eight episodes. To promote the show he appeared in a series of interviews prior to and during the airing of the TV series.
Philanthropic interests
Stroup, along with Corey Fleischer, another contestant and winner of The Big Brain Theory, and Jason Hardebeck founded the Baltimore Foundery in 2013, a nonprofit organization makerspace that focuses on providing access to industrial grade tools and education in the heart of Baltimore. Additionally, Stroup serves as a Trustee for the Awesome Foundation, which provide small grants for projects to people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.
