Episodios
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Big mergers that essentially create new companies require a lot of work to harmonize all of the people, processes and resources into something more cohesive across the organization.
Jeremy Wensinger joined V2X as chief executive in June to lead this new phase of what he calls “optimization” now that all the integration activities stemming from the 2022 merger that made the company are done.
In this episode, Wensinger explains to our Ross Wilkers how V2X is working to optimize the broader portfolio it now has in the name of growth and expansion across the government market.
Wensinger also describes where he sees V2X residing in the still-very fragmented federal services landscape, how it approaches technology insertion and what this new chapter means for the company’s 14,000 employees.
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One of the government market’s most-anticipated transactions closed on Sept. 30 when what we can call “Old Amentum” joined forces with Jacobs’ federal-facing units.
This episode sees Steve Arnette, chief operating officer at what we can now call “New Amentum,” take our Ross Wilkers through all that went into putting this larger company together and where everyone wants to go from here.
Underpinning this new version of Amentum’s vision and goals is what it calls a “technology-enabled growth strategy.” Arnette walks through that very strategy, how it applies to the company’s priority markets and what all of this means for Amentum’s 53,000 employees around the world.
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Jerry McGinn, executive director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University, shares the findings of a new report that identifies areas of concern and offers advice for improvement across the defense industrial base.
Some of the key findings that McGinn discusses with Editor Nick Wakeman include the importance of leadership, government and industry collaboration, and the need to design systems for more rapid production.
The U.S. industrial base has responded before, as McGinn says. He offers some of those important lessons from World War II, COVID-19 and the U.S.' response to Ukraine.
The full report is available here.
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Bryce Technology has been named to the Washington Technology Fast 50 list for four consecutive years, climbing to No. 11 in 2024.
For this episode, Bryce Tech's founder and CEO Carissa Bryce Christensen shares the secrets behind her company's rapid growth and success in the federal market.
Christensen discusses Bryce's strategic approach to building a scalable business, focusing the pipeline on the right opportunities and nurturing a company culture that empowers employees. She also tells Editor Nick Wakeman about the firm's ability to apply its expertise across both government and commercial sectors, especially in the dynamic space industry.
She also provides advice for aspiring entrepreneurs that emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, building the right partnerships, and staying true to your vision.
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Companies can get distracted a lot when carrying out their strategy and vision, which often times leaves them vulnerable to losing market share to competitors and unexpected turns of events.
Everything starts with strategic planning and that is also where the conversation begins for this episode featuring James Calver, a partner at fractional executive services provider TechCXO and multiple-time CEO in the health care and financial services industries.
Growth-oriented mindsets are required for all companies, as Calver tells our Ross Wilkers. That also inevitably leads to acquisitions, of which Calver oversaw dozens throughout his long career and draws lessons from that he gives to other CEOs.
The differences between management and leadership are also on the agenda, as is how to incorporate uncertainty into a plan and vision.
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It is not just appearances that suggest a robust government technology market, in fact there are numbers and patterns we can point to here in week number four of federal fiscal year 2025.
Where agencies are putting most of their technology budget dollars to work is the starting point for this episode featuring John Caucis and James Wichert, public sector analysts at the market intelligence firm Technology Business Research.
Caucis and Wichert take our Ross Wilkers through how companies are positioning themselves for that spend, including their organic investments and acquisitions that are signposts for where they want to go.
Also on their discussion agenda: how some companies are looking to wear both the integration and consulting hats, the future of Peraton with a new CEO in place and realities of the artificial intelligence landscape.
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Understandably so, the names of global tech giants are often at the center of the conversation surrounding how the U.S. government is putting its CHIPS Act funding to work through grants and other financial incentives.
But the Commerce Department wants many more companies to be a part of the push to restore U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing.
Larry Sher, a government contracts attorney and partner at Winston & Strawn, centers the discussion for this episode around how and where the GovCon industry can get involved as well.
As Sher tells our Ross Wilkers, the nature of the chip market’s supply chain means that Commerce has to cast its net far and wide beyond just the semiconductor makers themselves. Sher also explains some of the trends he is seeing in who is getting the grants and the homework companies must do before applying for the money.
What we can gauge from Intel's $3B military chip grant
IBM awarded $576M DOD chip manufacturing contract
First CHIPS Act award signals start of U.S. semiconductor push
NIST seeks industry support for chip funding applicant checks
NIST builds infrastructure for CHIPS loan program
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Boeing’s current difficult period is well-documented and acknowledged by its new CEO Kelly Ortberg, who joined in August to lead the turnaround effort.
Audrey Decker essentially functions as Team GovExec’s Boeing correspondent in her role as Air Force and Space Force reporter for our partner publication Defense One.
For this episode, Audrey breaks down the ongoing turmoil in Boeing’s defense and space segment amid a labor strike and search for a new leader after Ted Colbert left the company on Sept. 20.
This discussion with Ross Wilkers also goes over some of these key priorities for the customers that Audrey covers: a robot wingman program, commercial imagery, space domain awareness and the B-21 bomber.
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Artificial intelligence is not just a technology that government contractors provide their customers, but also is becoming a bigger piece of internal operations.
Kim Koster, vice president of product marketing at Unanet, joins WT Editor Nick Wakeman for this episode to discuss how and where contractors are adopting AI in their own operations as found in the newest edition of her company's GAUGE report.
Unanet and CohnReznick work each year to release GAUGE -- Government Contract Compliance, Accounting, Utilization, Growth and Efficiencies.
In explaining the 2024 GAUGE findings, Koster shares insights on AI usage trends, maturity levels and implementation strategies. Still not on your AI journey yet? Koster has some advice on how to start that as well.
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Frustration builds up when things go wrong in the world of government acquisition and that feeling is true on both sides: the customer and contractor alike.
Adam Rentschler and his partners started Valid Eval in 2011 to help agencies make better evaluations at scale. All throughout this episode, the latter two words of that sentence come up frequently in the conversation between Rentschler and our Ross Wilkers.
Rentschler’s vision is for the acquisition ecosystem to have more humanity in it and the use of data to help lead that effort.
Those concepts may seem contradictory on the surface, but Rentschler brings them together throughout the discussion.
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Many of the ingredients for creating more connective tissues between business, government and society are already in place even with so much commentary and conversation around what may be lacking on that front.
NobleReach Foundation launched in 2022 to be at the forefront of making more of those links happen. In this episode, NobleReach’s chief executive Arun Gupta describes how the nonprofit looks to do just that by taking others with them along the way.
Entrepreneurs out there who want to be part of solving big problems are both a core constituency of NobleReach and agencies that want greater access into that part of the innovation ecosystem, as Gupta explains to our Ross Wilkers.
Gupta co-authored the book “Venture Meets Mission” alongside his colleagues Gerard George and Thomas Fewer to lay out a roadmap and guiding principles for better alignment.
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Next to satellite imagery, drones have been the major technological focal point for the war in Ukraine and U.S. Army leaders have been looking to learn quickly from how the systems are being used there.
Sam Skove, who covers the Army and Marine Corps for our partner publication Defense One, has seen much of this action first-hand from visits to bases in the U.S. where the drones are tested and in Eastern Europe where they are fielded.
In this episode, Sam takes our Ross Wilkers through his reporting on how the Army's desire to bring more small drones into its fold does not necessarily match up with the U.S.' industrial capacity to make them in large quantities.
The reasons for that disconnect are myriad as Sam explains, as are some of the solutions he has heard from informed observers on how to bridge that gap.
Wartime need for drones would outstrip US production. There’s a way to fix that
Army puts new unit loaded with cutting-edge tech to the test
US shouldn't learn the wrong lessons about Ukraine’s drones, expert says
What Estonian drone companies are learning from Ukraine
Across the Army, units lean into drone experimentation
Army brass opposes drone branch
FPVs, tethered drones could become formal Army programs in 2025
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Dennis Kelly's public sector career journey began in the Navy and has continued as a senior executive for multiple contractors, which he led through periods of growth to be acquired by larger companies.
Now as CEO of Tyto Athene, Kelly brings that experience of building and scaling multiple businesses in a dynamic market.
In this episode, Kelly describes his approach for doing that in a conversation with WT's Editor Nick Wakeman and lays out Tyto Athene's path for growth.
Kelly also provides candid reflections on his journey from Navy veteran to federal tech CEO and shows his passion for supporting critical national security missions.
Tyto Athene hires Kelly as chief executive
BlueHalo to combine with Eqlipse Technologies
CIS Secure Computing acquires intelligence community IT firm
The drivers behind KBR's 'largest to date' & 'most transformational' acquisition
PAE closes A-T Solutions acquisition
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Raft's first six years of being in business are a lot like what many startups encounter, in that much of the growth has been bootstrapped and in very select corners of the market landscape it works in.
Now Raft is in a place where Shubhi Mishra, who started the software engineering company in 2018, believes there is much more greenfield in front of it. That led her to start looking for an investor in the company.
In this episode, Mishra tells our Ross Wilkers all about how she went against the advice of many other founders that told her to not go down that path and why she chose Washington Harbour Partners to back this phase of Raft's strategy.
Also on their agenda: the so-called "digital battlefield" concept and a significant paradigm shift Mishra wants to see in the prime-subcontractor relationship in the interest of advancing innovation.
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Much of the world shut down on July 19 after cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed a faulty software update that essentially rendered 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers useless.
David DiMolfetta, who covers cybersecurity at our partner publication NextGovFCW, led the bulk of GovExec's coverage of the aftermath even though the outage was not technically a cyber situation. But all that happened does bring up questions about network vulnerabilities and resilience.
In this episode, David tells our Ross Wilkers all about how federal agencies are working to recover and learn from an event that was truly historic in scale.
Blue screens of death were everywhere on July 19 and the entire situation was weird. As David explains, the scale of the outage is leading agencies to re-examine how they approach cyber and keeping tech assets healthy.
Summer-only sessions helped blunt CrowdStrike outage impact on US schools
Crowdstrike IT outage linked to update using new threat detection system
How the CrowdStrike outage carved out new opportunities for hackers
Biden briefed on CrowdStrike IT outage as multiple federal systems impacted
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Generative artificial intelligence is only the newest example of how federal agencies have different comfort levels with adopting new technologies and in this instance, intelligence agencies appear to be bolder in charting their path forward.
Frank Konkel, editor-in-chief for GovExec's publications including us, wrote a deep dive article earlier this month that includes his conversations with some intelligence community leaders on where their agencies are at in Gen AI.
In this episode, Frank tells our Ross Wilkers all about what they told him and what else he found in putting together that story to explore what IC agencies are up to in Gen AI and their grander visions for the technology.
As you will hear from Frank, they want to go fast and also be thoughtful about mitigating some of the risks in doing so.
The US intelligence community is embracing generative AI
The CIA is taking a ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach to GenAI
2023 was just the start of generative AI’s rise, government and industry leaders say
Proceed with caution: Industry advises a careful approach to generative AI
3 in 4 Americans Worry AI Will Take Their Jobs
CIA Awards Secret Multibillion-Dollar Cloud Contract
Pentagon awards $9B cloud contract to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle
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Just about every conversation about technology across the federal landscape seems to begin and end with generative artificial intelligence, a tool that spurs fears and hopes all at the same time.
Edward Graham has a front-row seat to many of those conversations in his role at our sibling publication Nextgov/FCW, where he reports on national security technologies and policies.
For this episode, Edward tells our Ross Wilkers all about the current state of play for where the Defense and Homeland Security Departments are at on their generative AI journeys.
Guardrails and pilots are more than just buzzwords for generative AI. As you will hear from Edward, they are the key words to hone in on for understanding where generative AI is today and the direction it is going in.
DOD’s generative AI task force will help set guardrails for broader use
DHS generative AI pilot embraces hiccups of emerging tech
AI can enhance border security but won’t close workforce gap, lawmakers say
DHS hires initial cohort of 10 to join its AI Corps
VA is already using AI to identify and assist veterans in crisis, officials say
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Byron Bright described KBR as a "big, large science, technology and engineering company" to open a presentation for investors in May on the vision and blueprint for the entire business.
His description to Wall Street is also the starting point for this episode, where Bright explains how Company No. 17 on our 2024 Top 100 tailors that idea to U.S. government work and sheds further light on the worldwide nature of what KBR does.
The trilateral AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the U.K. and U.S. is an example of how KBR thinks globally. Today's AUKUS activity remains mostly government-to-government, but Bright believes that will open up opportunities for industry after more is figured out.
Bright also overviews KBR's work to build out a franchise space business and the technology angle to everything the company does.
The 2024 Washington Technology Top 100
How we got our numbers
Our 2024 Top 100 reader's guide
Trends driving today's Top 100
Diversity gaps persist among the Top 100 C-suites
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GovCIO's starting point for its journey in the market might as well be the acquisition of Salient CRGT in 2020 that greatly multiplied both key measurements of scale: revenue base and workforce.
Joe Cormier, both chief operating officer and chief financial officer at GovCIO, explains in this episode how the technology integrator has become what it is today as a result of that transaction. For context: GovCIO was at 500 employees when its private equity owner entered the investment and now has 3,000 on staff.
Company No. 41 on our 2024 Top 100 is now almost solely focused on organic growth, including its capture of a recompete almost four times the size of its predecessor. Cormier describes that win to our Ross Wilkers in their wide-ranging conversation that also covers how GovCIO approached the integration and is thinking about what's next for itself.
Dive into the rankings and more surrounding them by clicking the links below:
The 2024 Washington Technology Top 100
How we got our numbers
Our 2024 Top 100 reader's guide
Trends driving today's Top 100
Diversity gaps persist among the Top 100 C-suites
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As one of the federal government's primary carriers, Lumen Technologies also takes on the mantle of layering the latest innovations on top of the core network to make it more complete and well-rounded.
Jason Schulman, national vice president of federal government sales at Lumen Technologies, explains in this episode how the company works with agencies to make that happen regardless of where they are in their innovation comfort levels.
For Company No. 38 on our 2024 Top 100, that also means looking beyond the current Enterprise Infrastructure contract vehicle as the government is already thinking about its successor. Schulman tells our Ross Wilkers all about how the work begins now on that front for carriers and agencies alike.
Dive into the rankings and more surrounding them by clicking the links below:
The 2024 Washington Technology Top 100
How we got our numbers
Our 2024 Top 100 reader's guide
Trends driving today's Top 100
Diversity gaps persist among the Top 100 C-suites
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