Isadora Martin-Dye is the founder of Sagena, the AI platform for wedding venues, and the owner of Rixey Manor, the Knot Hall of Fame wedding venue in Virginia where Sagena was built. Through her company, Isadora & Co, she also builds Ground (a personal OS with an AI companion) and Threadline (a free public intelligence utility for missing-persons cases). In 2026 she spoke at AI Engineer World's Fair, API World and DC State of the Stack, on vertical AI and on what it actually takes to design software for the relationship-driven, emotionally heightened audiences other AI products keep getting wrong.
Isadora Martin-Dye is the founder of Isadora & Co. English-born and trained in Los Angeles in film and television (credits include The Hunger Games), she bought a foreclosed, derelict 1801 manor house she’d found on Zillow in 2014 and restored it into Rixey Manor, now a Knot Hall of Fame wedding venue with 350+ weddings and 200+ five-star reviews. In 2016 she hosted the first bridal shoot with professional model Madeline Stuart, reaching CNN, the Today Show, and publications worldwide. After a decade of running a venue she began writing software. Her main venture is Sagena, the AI platform for wedding venues, built inside Rixey Manor. Alongside it she builds Ground, a personal OS with an AI companion, and Threadline, a free public intelligence platform for missing-persons cases. She speaks and writes on what changes about AI design when the operator is also the builder, and on the underrated craft of writing AI for customers in emotionally heightened states. In 2026 she spoke at AI Engineer World's Fair, API World and DC State of the Stack.
Isadora Martin-Dye is an English-born, Virginia-based founder whose work spans hospitality, AI, and public-interest technology. She began her career in Los Angeles in film and television, working in talent management and production with credits including The Hunger Games, before moving east in 2014 to buy a foreclosed, derelict 1801 manor house she’d found on Zillow. Over the following decade she restored the building and built it into Rixey Manor, a wedding venue since inducted into The Knot Hall of Fame with more than 350 weddings hosted and 200+ five-star reviews. In 2016 she hosted the first bridal photo shoot featuring Australian model Madeline Stuart, the first professional model with Down syndrome. She ran the shoot because every woman should be able to see herself as a bride. It reached CNN, the Today Show, Mic, The Mighty, and publications worldwide.
After ten years inside the wedding industry, Martin-Dye had a very specific picture of what was wrong with it: fragmented inboxes, ten disconnected tools, and operator knowledge that never left the operator’s head. So she started writing software. Her main venture today is Sagena, the AI platform for wedding venues, built and used every day at Rixey Manor. Its assistant, Sage, answers couples in each venue’s own trained voice and remembers what they share, and Sagena shows venues which of their marketing actually books weddings. Rixey Manor remains her operating venue. Alongside them, under Isadora & Co, she builds Ground, a personal operating system with an AI companion named Reid that brings together food, sleep, mood, fitness, relationships, finances, and therapy in a single thread. And Threadline, a free public intelligence utility that aggregates NamUs, the Doe Network, and the Charley Project into a single searchable corpus and runs AI pattern analysis across missing-persons cases to surface connections a human reading one record at a time would miss. Four different industries, same pattern every time: something that should have worked, didn’t, and wasn’t going to get fixed unless somebody sat down and fixed it.
Martin-Dye speaks and writes on the design principles that emerged from building all four. The strategic case for vertical AI over horizontal. The four-layer prompt architecture she developed at Sagena to keep brand voice consistent under unusual conditions. And what she has had to learn about writing AI for users in emotionally heightened states, where the standard playbook actively backfires. Her talks come from production systems she has built and is operating solo. In 2026 she spoke at AI Engineer World's Fair, API World and DC State of the Stack. She is Master-Certified by the Wedding MBA and a graduate of the Wedding Industry Speakers Course.
