Brandon Torres Declet is an entrepreneur, technology executive, board member, and advisor whose career spans national security, drones, robotics, autonomous systems, and emerging technology.
Declet grew up on Roosevelt Island in New York City and was the first person in his family to attend college. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Union College before attending Fordham University School of Law. He later earned an LL.M. in National Security Law from Georgetown University Law Center.
His career began in public service. Declet worked as counsel with the New York Police Department’s Counter Terrorism Bureau and later served as National Security Counsel in the U.S. Congress. The experience exposed him to complex questions involving technology, policy, regulation, and risk.
In 2013, Declet took a different path and founded MEASURE, an aerial intelligence company built during the early growth of the commercial drone industry. He later held executive and board positions with technology companies including AgEagle Aerial Systems and Unusual Machines.
Over the years, Declet has worked across company building, acquisitions, corporate governance, capital markets, and technology commercialization. His work in the drone industry also earned industry recognition, including a Technology and Engineering Emmy connected to innovation in drone cinematography.
Today, Declet brings those experiences to his work as a board member and advisor, while remaining closely engaged with drones, robotics, defense technology, and autonomous systems. Outside of business, he enjoys running and places family at the center of how he defines a successful life.
You were the first person in your family to attend college. What did success mean to you then?
When I was younger, success was much easier to measure. I grew up on Roosevelt Island in New York, and becoming the first person in my family to attend college was a meaningful milestone. At that stage of my life, success meant creating opportunities that hadn’t existed before.
Going to Union College expanded what I thought was possible. Law school at Fordham opened another door, and Georgetown later gave me the opportunity to focus specifically on national security law. I did not have my entire career mapped out. I was trying to keep moving forward and put myself in rooms where I could learn something.
I still value ambition, but I no longer think success is simply a sequence of bigger accomplishments.
What did working in government teach you that you later carried into business?
Working in counterterrorism and national security taught me that complicated problems rarely have perfectly clean answers.
You can make a decision for the right reason and still create an unintended consequence. You can also have several smart people look at the same information and reach different conclusions because they are responsible for different things.
That stayed with me when I became an entrepreneur. In business, I learned to pay attention to who a decision affects, what assumptions we are making, and where the risks might show up if those assumptions are wrong.
What did becoming an entrepreneur teach you that law and government could not?
Entrepreneurship taught me how personal a decision becomes when you are responsible for executing it.
When I founded MEASURE in 2013, commercial drones were still a developing market. Many ideas existed about what drones might eventually do, but a business could not survive on possibilities. We needed customers who had actual problems we could solve.
That forced me to become comfortable changing direction. Sometimes an idea can be technically interesting and still not deserve more of the company’s time.
As a founder, you cannot analyze forever. Eventually, you have to choose, act, and live with the result.
Have you ever pursued something that changed how you think about success?
Absolutely. I have been involved with enough companies, acquisitions, products, and growth plans to know that something can look much better at the beginning than it does once you are responsible for making it work.
Earlier in my career, I probably valued movement more. If we were growing, raising capital, adding capabilities, or entering another market, it felt like progress.
Experience taught me to separate activity from progress. A company can be extremely busy and still be avoiding its most important problem. Today, I am much more interested in whether an opportunity makes the organization stronger than whether it makes the organization bigger.
You received a Technology and Engineering Emmy for innovation involving drones. What does recognition like that mean to you?
It was meaningful because it reflected how far drone technology had come.
When you work with an emerging technology, there is a period when people are fascinated simply because the technology exists. Eventually, if the industry succeeds, that novelty starts disappearing. People care less about the drone and more about what it lets them accomplish.
I actually think that transition is a sign of success. The goal for an emerging technology should eventually be to stop feeling emerging. People trust and use it because it works.
An award can recognize an important moment, but seeing a technology become genuinely useful interests me more over the long term.
After spending years as a CEO, what successes happen behind the scenes?
Some of the most important ones would make terrible press releases.
Helping someone on your team become capable of making decisions without you is a success. Choosing not to pursue an attractive distraction can be a success. Fixing an operational problem before customers ever know it exists is a success.
I think executives naturally get tied to visible milestones. The longer I have done this, the more I appreciate the quieter work that makes those milestones possible.
Has being a board member and advisor changed your definition of a successful outcome?
It has changed my perspective because I’m no longer always the person responsible for executing the decision.
As an advisor, success might mean helping a founder identify a risk before it becomes expensive. It might mean asking one question that causes the leadership team to reconsider an assumption. Sometimes the founder listens to my perspective and still makes a different decision, and that can be completely reasonable.
I do not think an advisor succeeds by getting everyone to agree with them. I think you succeed when you help people make a more informed decision.
Where does family fit into your definition of success?
It is central to it.
I have always been an intense operator. I enjoy building companies and tackling difficult problems, and I don’t see myself losing that part of my personality. But professional accomplishment by itself is not enough for me.
Family provides perspective that business cannot. Companies will always have another problem to solve and another opportunity to pursue. If you let work become the only measure of whether your life is going well, there is no natural finish line.
I want to keep doing ambitious work without letting ambition define everything else.
What does success look like to you today?
Today, success is being able to choose difficult problems I find meaningful, work with people I respect, and remain useful to founders and companies building something worthwhile.
It also means keeping enough perspective to enjoy the rest of my life. Running helps with that. There is something useful about doing an activity that is simple compared with the decisions that fill most working days. You put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
I am still ambitious. I am still fascinated by drones, robotics, autonomous systems, and what comes next. But I do not feel the need to turn every interesting possibility into my next project.
At this point in my life, success is having the experience to recognize an opportunity and the independence to decide whether it belongs in my life.