ABOUT XYLOPLAN

XyloPlan was built by a team with decades of experience in fire operations, mitigation planning, and insurance risk modeling. Our fire intellegence platform was purpose-built to model, measure, and operationalize mitigation for the wind-driven Fast Fires that cause community-scale loss.

OUR STORY

As a fire chief, Dave Winnacker faced a recurring challenge:

Fire agencies were equipped with data, but very little direction.

Existing tools showed where fire risk existed, but didn’t answer the real-world questions frontline teams face:

  • Where do we act first?
  • What actions will make a difference?
  • How can we justify and track the impact of our efforts?

So Dave set out to build what was missing.

What began as a simple question — where will fire move fastest? — evolved into a new way of modeling fire risk.

Today, XyloPlan partners with fire agencies, land managers, and insurers to move mitigation from theory to action — improving coordination, protecting insurance access, and advancing community resilience at scale.

OUR TEAM
Dave Winnacker2

Dave Winnacker
Co-Founder | Chief Fire Risk Officer

Dave Winnacker brings more than two decades of operational fire service leadership to XyloPlan. As Fire Chief of the Moraga-Orinda Fire District (2017–2024), he spearheaded wildfire preparedness initiatives across high-risk communities. Dave has served in key statewide roles, including Director for California at the Western Fire Chiefs Association, Chair of the California Fire Chiefs WUI Task Force, and advisor on wildfire mitigation legislation (AB9, AB642). He is a Hoover Institution Veteran Fellow at Stanford University, where his research focuses on the intersection of wildfire risk and property insurance. A Marine Corps Infantry officer from 1997–2004, Dave continued serving in the reserves in senior leadership roles until 2024. Prior to co-founding XyloPlan, he helped launch ZoneHaven (Genasys), the evacuation platform now used widely across California.

Scott Cheeseman2

Scott Cheeseman
Co-Founder | Chief Executive Officer

XyloPlan co-founder Scott Cheeseman’s experience with wildfires began at home. After being evacuated twice from his Sonoma County community during wildfires, Scott saw firsthand how quickly fire risk can outpace the tools meant to manage it. That experience drove him to help build a better way forward. Previously, Scott co-founded Carbon Health, where he helped scale the company into a national leader in primary and urgent care. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Today, he leads XyloPlan’s strategy, partnerships, and mission to bring meaningful wildfire resilience to the communities that need it most.

Scott Farley

Scott Farley
Co-Founder | Head of Research & Development

Scott Farley leads XyloPlan’s modeling and technical development, bringing scientific rigor to the most difficult problems related to wildfire risk. As a former wildland firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service, he saw how quickly fires move and experienced the limitations of existing tools. Combining his hands-on fire experience with a deep expertise in geospatial data science, he worked as a software engineer and machine learning specialist at Mapbox and founded Willow Labs, a wildfire analytics consultancy. Scott holds a master’s degree in GIS and physical geography from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a BA in geography from UC Berkeley. Today, his work powers XyloPlan’s unique ability to model the speed, direction, and real-world consequences of fast-moving fires.

SEE OUR PLATFORM IN ACTION

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