Kelda Mae Tabaranza

I’ve spent over a decade at the forefront of autonomous technology — building teams, launching programs, and turning cutting-edge R&D into real-world operations.

I got my start at Luxe, one of San Francisco’s earliest on-demand startups, where I was among the first operations hires. From there, I joined Zoox, where I spent more than seven years helping build the Vehicle Operations test team from the ground up — launching testing programs in the Bay Area and Las Vegas, and eventually leading RoboTaxi operations as the program matured toward public launch.

Today, I’m Senior Manager of Flight Operations at Pyka, where I manage local research and development flight testing in the Bay Area, bringing that same hands-on, build-it-from-scratch energy to the world of autonomous aviation.