Profiles in Success...Volume 7 eBook

Copyright 2014 © Gordon J. Bernhardt, CPA, PFS, CFP®, AIF® ISBN: 978-0-9849572-7-9 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, or to obtain additional copies of this book for $29.99, contact the publisher below: Gordon J. Bernhardt, CPA, PFS, CFP®, AIF® 7601 Lewinsville Road, Suite 210 McLean, VA 22102 (703) 356-4380 Toll-free: (888) 356-4380 www.BernhardtWealth.com First edition – Volume 7 All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to a qualified charity, including but not limited to BEST Kids, Inc. (www.bestkids.org), YouthQuest Foundation (www.youthquestfoundation.org) and Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (www.nfte.com).

Gordon Bernhardt conducts interviews of business leaders in the Washington D.C. area who come recommended by their peers. The enclosed profiles are a result of these interviews. As a result of these additional insights Mr. Bernhardt has published these case studies. Gordon Bernhardt is President/CEO of Bernhardt Wealth Management, a registered investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration is mandatory for all persons meeting the definition of investment adviser and does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The business leaders may or may not be clients of Bernhardt Wealth Management. These interviews are independent of investment advisory services and do not imply any endorsement of Gordon Bernhardt or Bernhardt Wealth Management by the business leaders.

This book exists because of all the inspirational individuals who so graciously shared their stories with me. I am thankful for the opportunity to get to know each and every one of you.

To my team at Bernhardt Wealth Management—Tim Koehl, Olivia Dewey, Trent White, Bonnie Armstrong, Kate Brodowski and Emily Burns—I would never have been able to do this without your efforts and support throughout the process.

I am deeply grateful to Brien Biondi, Founder and CEO of The Biondi Group, and Peter Schwartz, Host of Executive Leaders D.C. and President of Peter Schwartz & Associates, for your help and encouragement on this project. Thank you.

And lastly, this book would not have been possible without the guidance and creative support of the Impact Communications team.

Contents

1 Foreword

83 Chris Marentis

3 Introduction

87 Robert W. Massie, IV

Profiles in Success

93 Marshall Micheals, III

5 Jason Bloomberg

97 Peter J. Miller

9 Don Britton

101 Vernand Morency

13 Kendall Coleman

105 Mehrdad Negahban

17 C.R. George Dove

109 Barbara Newhouse

21 Colin Eagen

113 Andrew Nussbaum

25 Al Espinoza

117 Richard Pineda

29 John Foster-Bey

121 Agustin Ramos

33 Tom Gibson

125 Janet Samuelson

37 Fletcher Gill

129 Sundeep Sanghavi

41 Paul Gurman

133 Kay Sears

45 Ann Harkins

137 Randolph Shapiro

49 Rob Henninger

141 Robert Struble

53 Alan Horowitz

145 Paul Trapp

57 Terry Hsiao

149 Tom Weithman

61 David Isaacson

153 Charles White

65 Dennis Kelly

157 Bradley T. Williams

69 Stan Krejci

161 Vennard Wright

71 Fran Kysela

75 Vijay Lakshman

165 From Gifford to Hickman

by Gloria J. Bernhardt

79 Michael Maholchic

Foreword When Gordon Bernhardt asked me to consider writing a foreword to his next volume in his successful Profiles in Success series, I was of course honored, but I was also secretly thrilled. It was nice to be asked to assist with — even a small way — a publication of a book that teaches and inspires; and better yet, furthers and strengthens the art and practice of entrepreneurship.

Having been actively involved with entrepreneurship for more than 20 years, serving as CEO for more than a decade for both the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and the Chief Executives Organization (CEO), I have enjoyed the great privilege of working with thousands of entrepreneurs — both emerging and veteran — from around the globe. I have seen from both a distance, and up close from inside the trenches, how entrepreneurial businesses start and grow and what it takes to be successful. I have seen enterprises of every size, shape and color and have witnessed and celebrated countless winning success stories and mourned with friends over some heart-breaking losses. I am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to witness that keen entrepreneurial spirit living vibrant and well in businesses founders and watched with awe their total and complete commitment, perseverance and sacrifice to the task.

My career has afforded me the opportunity to amass a significant knowledge base about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, and what I have learned is that is all about peer learning and sharing of ideas. What has been confirmed time after time is that peer-to-peer learning from shared experiences and lessons learned is the key. Today’s entrepreneurs don’t learn how to establish and run a business by hearing a lecture, reading a text book, or attending a business class. Maybe it’s because entrepreneurs are wired differently, but whatever the reason, it’s clear to me that they learn from hearing how others have handled similar situations and what they did to overcome specific challenges. And by getting feedback and answering questions when sharing your own experiences provides even further assistance when it’s time to weather even more complicated business management storms.

That’s why I love Gordon’s books and applaud their value. Gaining insight by reading these pro-

files is just like hearing the stories straight from the individuals themselves. Gordon has captured some phenomenal anecdotes about many of the best and brightest business leaders in the Washington, D.C. region. His smart interview process garners the most interesting and intriguing facts about enterprising CEOs which offer lots of valuable nuggets of really useful information. He’s also savvy enough to capture the personal side of these leaders so we truly understand what they’re about, how they achieved success, and what it took for them to get where they are today.

Profiles in Success is not only entertaining, but a great book for entrepreneurs and business owners because it provides more than an insightful glimpse into the thought process leading up to ground-making moments. This country was built on entrepreneurship, and we will only continue to prosper which the emergence of more innovative entrepreneurs into the next generations. The Profiles in Leadership series is nothing less than brilliant. It provides an intimate view of noted strong leaders whose impressive accomplishments in business, family and philanthropy will act as inspiration for the new and upcoming entrepreneurs, who will carry the torch forward into the future.

Brien Biondi Founder and CEO The Biondi Group LLC

Brien Biondi, CPA, MBA, is the founder and CEO of The Biondi Group, facilitating business development by leveraging a global network created over more than 20 years of working with CEOs around the world. Biondi’s C-level consulting includes strategy, advising high-level management teams, raising capital, engineering organizational turn-arounds, and improving corporate Foreword

1

culture. Brien was previously the president and COO of the League Asset Corp., Executive Director of Chief Executives’ Organization, and CEO of Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Biondi serves or has served on the boards for: Junior Achievement’s Strategic Planning Task Force, the National Governors’ Association Entrepreneurship Advisory Group, the Research Institute for Small and

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Emerging Business, Social Entrepreneur Awareness for Change, The Advanced Management Institute, and the Greater Washington Area Board of Directors of The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. He has been featured in numerous media outlets and was selected as one of three national finalists in the 2002 and 2003 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards “Support of Entrepreneurship” category.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Introduction “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world.

For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” – Margaret Mead

Caring

Money is an emotional experience. It is a source that can cause a sense of stress, happiness, security and a myriad of other emotions as well. When building your relationship with your financial advisor, it is important that you get the sense that they care. Caring is more than sending a note thanking a client for their business. It is a perceived genuine interest in your emotional and physical wellbeing.

Caring is just one of six core characteristics – the “Six Cs” – a trusted financial advisor should possess: character, chemistry, caring, competence, cost-effective and consultative.

In my experience, well-intentioned advisors that truly care about their clients do a few things.

First, they make a concerted effort. You know that old saying, “actions speak louder than words”? Well, it’s true. Is your financial advisor going above and beyond sending your monthly statements or the annual Christmas card? As an advisor, I always try to celebrate personal milestones with my clients – a daughter graduating from college, the purchase of a new vacation home, or a retirement from a long and fulfilling career. I believe a simple act of kindness to acknowledge success can speak volumes.

Secondly, a financial advisor that cares is one that genuinely appreciates your professional relationship. As an advisor, I am always grateful that a person or a family has entrusted me to help them turn their dreams into realities. This journey, much like the stock market, is not always a smooth and straight line to the top. No matter where we are in the journey, I always act in a manner that displays empathy and compassion for my clients. I am present in the relationship as much as possible.

General Colin Powell (Ret.) once said “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”

Powell makes a great point. Demonstrating

‘caring’ on a regular basis is more challenging than it sounds. And indeed, any perceived lack of caring is considered a failure. This sentiment was lamented throughout many of the conversations I had with the individuals featured in this chapter. Many focus on examples of leadership that have personally inspired them. Others take note of the challenges of developing a caring leader.

Caring is the human aspect to business and an essential trait for success. Great leaders understand that a caring relationship is nurtured. Dale Carnegie once said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” After reading these stories, I hope you take away that genuine caring for others has a powerful effect – not only on a personal level – but on a professional level as well.

These individuals offer many lessons-learned and experiences. I hope you take the time to reflect on your professional relationships and consider - what are your actions saying about you?

Gordon J. Bernhardt, CPA, PFS, CFP®, AIF® President and Founder Bernhardt Wealth Management, Inc. www.BernhardtWealth.com

Since establishing his firm in 1994, Gordon Bern¬hardt has been focused on providing high-quality ser¬vice and independent financial advice in order to help his clients make smart decisions about their money.

He specializes in addressing the unique needs of successful professionals, entrepreneurs and retirees, as well as wom¬en in transition throughout the Washington, D.C. area. Over the years, Gordon has been sought out by numer¬ous media outlets including MSN Money, CNN Money, Kiplinger and The New York Times for his insight into subjects related to personal finance.

Introduction

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Jason Bloomberg The Adaptability Edge While growing up, Jason Bloomberg’s home life was anything but stable. He was only three when his parents divorced, and seven when he left his mother’s home in Albuquerque to spend his second grade year under the care of his neglectful father and stepmother in San Francisco.

The experience was traumatic, but formative.

“They didn’t take care of me the way parents should a child that age,” he recalls. “All I remember is feeling fear and anger—neglect at home, difficulty at school. But looking back on my life, the trauma that I experienced in that year formed my personality, and has made me the resourceful, driven, independent person I am today.”

Although both parents were clinical psychologists, they couldn’t have been further apart. “They’re two very different people with two very different lives and two very different ideas of what psychology meant in practice,” Jason explains. His father became a “hippie shrink” who dived headfirst into the 1960s California drug scene, while his newly remarried mother alienated his stepsiblings and filled their new Albuquerque home with discord. With little guidance from either of them, Jason relied on his stepfather as his primary adult role model during his teen years, even though he was aloof and distant due to being nearly deaf.

Left to his own devices, Jason focused on school and excelled academically, travelled Europe alone in the summers, and developed the self-sufficiency and adaptability necessary to thrive in the ever-evolving tech world.

Today, Jason is something of a celebrity in that world, internationally recognized as an expert in the areas of Service-Oriented Architecture and Cloud Computing. “I do have groupies,“ he laughs. “Unfortunately, they’re mostly middle-aged men!” As President of ZapThink, a Dovel Technologies Company, he’s constantly travelling in order to keep up with demand. Indeed, his calendar is a catalogue of exhausting itineraries that include trips to Bangalore, Rome, London, Toronto, São Paolo, Sydney, and Estonia—not to mention plenty of commitments in the US.

ZapThink’s core mission is to add value to parent company Dovel, a government contractor, by establishing the business as a thought leader in the tech industry and differentiating them from similar companies. To that end, Jason runs courses, authors articles, and writes books, but his well-known expertise is a double-edged sword. “It’s great because I have a strong personal brand that is global and well-recognized,” he remarks. “But the downside is that even though ZapThink has a brand too, people know it’s really just me! So it’s hard to add a trainer, for example, because people want me to deliver each course personally.”

Jason’s renown in the field, while hardly surprising given his early academic successes, developed organically over decades of technological evolution. Given the rate of change in the industry, he certainly never predicted where he’d end up as an introverted high school student with startling ability in mathematics. As early as eighth grade, his teachers allowed him to study math independently; during spring break of his eighth grade year, he completed the 10th grade math curriculum. He completed his high school’s advanced mathematics course of study in 10th grade, and for the following two years, he took college-level math and programming courses at the nearby University of New Mexico.

By the time he applied to colleges, he believed he wanted to pursue mathematics further, so he decided to attend the well-known math, science, and engineering school, Harvey Mudd College, in Southern California.

After a couple of years in the program, however, Jason became disillusioned with the college and craved a more diverse, liberal arts curriculum. He transferred to Pomona College, which shares a campus with Harvey Mudd and the three other Claremont Colleges, and developed a strong interest in analytical philosophy. During his two years at Pomona, he gradually transitioned away from math and science courses and began to favor philosophy above the other disciplines, and although he graduated with a degree in physics, he immediately began looking into advanced degrees in the History and Philosophy of

Jason Bloomberg

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Science—a program that seemed to combine all his major interests.

As he took a break after graduation to consider his options for graduate school, Jason naturally gravitated back toward his first love: high school math. He took a position teaching 10th to 12th grade students in California, working in that capacity for two years. He then packed up and left California for good, settling into the History and Philosophy of Science graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh.

While he enjoyed the philosophy curriculum, the history subject matter proved more of a challenge, as did the politics endemic in Academia. “Over the next four or five years, I became frustrated with the program,” he recalls. “Many of the professors were alcoholics, and the history portion of the curriculum didn’t have the appeal of the philosophy. It also became clear that the academic life centered on politics. As a result, my whole life plan got derailed. When grad school didn’t work out, I found myself looking for a different career. Anything was possible.”

When he began his PhD program in 1985, Jason had planned to go into academia, teaching philosophy at a university. By the time he left in 1989, he had earned two master’s degrees—one in History and Philosophy of Science, and another in Mathematics—but no real idea how he would put either to use. For the next few years, he returned to teaching high school mathematics and computer courses and was quickly made head of a computer department at a K – 12 school in Pittsburgh.

Accustomed to teaching high school, Jason was out of his element when he was assigned to K through 8 children. “I found that I liked the computers more than the kids, which made me realize that teaching was the wrong career for me,” Jason explains. In 1992, he left teaching to offer computer consulting until, in 1995, the web began to take off. “It’s as though my career had been waiting for that major turning point,” Jason explains. He began building websites for businesses, and his services were soon in high demand. “I built dozens of websites,” he recalls. As it turned out, he was perfectly positioned to ride the dot.com wave from 1995 through 2001. “I kept doubling my salary every couple of years, moving from one firm to the next, building my skills. The wild ride ended with a position as an industry analyst for IDC.” During that time, he and his first wife moved from Pittsburgh to Atlanta to Massachusetts, and had two children along the way.

In 2000, Jason’s soon-to-be business partner, Ron Schmelzer, founded the original ZapThink, which Jason joined in 2001, bringing his market research experience 6

from his brief tenure at IDC. At the time, ZapThink was an industry analyst firm researching then-new XML technology. When Jason joined, this focus evolved into web services analysis, which in turn evolved into serviceoriented architecture (SOA), an outgrowth of web services. By the middle of the decade, ZapThink was widely regarded as the leading web services and SOA analyst firm in the world, beating out other companies like IBM, Microsoft, HP, Motorola, British Telecom, Samsung, and the U.S. Treasury, as well as dozens of tech startups among their hundreds of customers.

But then the market shifted. “We went through a complicated strategic shift from that point onward,” Jason remarks. “Service-oriented architecture was more of a best practices approach than a product offering, and we decided in the middle of the last decade that, instead of continuing to focus on emerging market analysis, we would shift our focus to the enterprise end-user, principally the architect.” Thus, in 2006, Jason and Ron reoriented ZapThink so that it became less of a market research and industry analyst firm, concentrating more on best practice advisory and training. They developed the Licensed ZapThink Architect training course that came to be regarded as the best vendor-independent SOA course and associated credential in the world, which led to the Dovel Technologies acquisition of ZapThink in 2011. Now, as the president of the ZapThink division of Dovel, Jason continues to run the LZA course as well as a newer Cloud Computing course.

Jason’s trademark adaptability and willingness to attack the most complex cutting edge technologies shuttled him from mathematics, to physics, to philosophy, to computers, to website building, and then beyond. Yet, when it comes to the longevity of this kind of work, his outlook is realistic. “So much of what I do is ephemeral,” he remarks. “When I go back through my professional experiences, I built more than fifty websites between 1995 and 1997, and by 1999 they were all gone. All the work we did lost its value in the space of a few short years. The research we wrote during ZapThink’s early years would also go out of date in a matter of months. And today, it’s the same thing. Technology changes so fast—our challenge is to create the best value we can for our clients in this moment by having our sights set on the horizon to stay aligned with what’s next.”

In today’s fast-paced world, the only way to stay ahead of the curve is to always be learning while constantly deriving new insights from current trends—skills Jason learned at a young age and hopes to pass on to his own children. “My kids are my real legacy,” he says proudly. “Both are very smart and computer oriented,

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

which I’ve been supportive of as they’ve grown up. I know they’ll go on to do great things.” When it comes to self-discipline, it’s clear that the apples don’t fall far from the tree: Jason’s 16-year-old daughter is completing independent home schooling in lieu of traditional high school, while his 20-year-old son recently finished basic training for the National Guard.

To other young people making their way into the professional world today, Jason cautions against typical platitudes. “You may have a certain dream today, but in ten years, it’s very likely you’ll be doing something com-

pletely different—something that may be perfect for you, but that you couldn’t have imagined. The world changes fast, and there are too many different routes to limit yourself to the visions you have today. Go with the flow!

Be adaptable!” Indeed, as Jason’s career demonstrates, in today’s marketplace, success comes not so much from careful planning, which is often rendered irrelevant tomorrow, as it does from finding and riding one’s own adaptability edge in the tumultuous yet exciting world in which we live.

Jason Bloomberg

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Don Britton The Self-Reliant Collaborator From childhood, Don Britton knew he wanted to work for himself. What’s more, he wasn’t about to wait for adulthood to do it: by the age of nine, he was already earning money independently through various businesses of his own imagining. His unusual childhood spent moving around Europe with his CIA-agent, single mother was rife with inspiration for his young mind, and each location brought a new market and new ideas.

Don’s first venture, in London, involved copying records onto cassette tapes. He had learned how to copy the records for his personal collection, but, upon discovering a demand for his skill in the neighborhood, began charging a few dollars for each copy. Next, he began grocery shopping for busy adults who had trouble finding time to make it to the store.

In Germany, he opened a pet care service and helped neighbors install their cable televisions for a small fee.

By the time he turned 18 and headed back to the U.S., Don had a head full of ideas about running his own business, but he soon discovered that banks weren’t particularly eager to give loans to a recent high school graduate with no professional background or higher education. Setting aside his financial concerns, and the support of his mother, he got a job at a grocery store and headed to college, paying his way through three years at Northern Virginia Community College, followed by two years at George Mason University. In college, nine years after he’d begun to earn money, he experienced working for someone other than himself for the first time. His entrepreneurial dreams were put on hold as he pursued his B.S. in Accounting and three other Associates degrees, but he never doubted his eventual return to the arena.

Today, Don is President of Network Alliance, the business he built by night over several years while working full time during the day. And although the company was officially incorporated in 1997, the prototype for the idea wasn’t finished until 2000—a problem borne of the sheer technological sophistication of the model. “In 1996, there really wasn’t much security on the Internet,”

he recalls. “The cost of getting Internet access was astronomical, but I could see that everything was coming together. Part of the problem we had was waiting for different technologies to catch up to what we wanted to do.

Back then, I was told I was crazy, that nobody would ever do this kind of stuff. But now it’s the way everything’s going, and it’s the way things are going to be in the future.”

Network Alliance does something truly revolutionary in that it transforms information technology into a utility. Rather than managing their own infrastructures individually, small business can outsource the entire thing to Network Alliance, which, thanks to economies of scale, is able to provide a much higher quality infrastructure at a fraction of the price. The business provides a virtual desktop, complete with applications, files, and all the IT needs of a small business, for a flat monthly fee, and with far greater reliability than a small private IT department could offer.

Few people saw a future for the ITas-a-Utility model 15 years ago, but Don looked to earlier technologies for clear precedents as he pursued his vision. Electricity during the industrial revolution was one such beacon. “Factories used to have to build their own electrical plants to power their factories,” he points out. “But as all factories started doing that, any loss of power meant loss of productivity. Eventually power utilities started saying, ‘Hey, instead of you trying to maintain that generator on your own all the time, constantly having to buy your own parts and pay for servicing, why don’t you just let us do that for you? We’ll create all these redundancies to make it more reliable, so every time you turn the power switch on, you know you’re getting light.’ That’s the way IT works with us. We’re able to build the redundancies so clients can count on it being there.” The outsourcing model also increases access by being available from any internet-enabled device. In the event of a storm and subsequent loss of power at an office, for instance, employees are able to login to their virtual desktop from anywhere that has power and a stable internet connection.

Currently, Network Alliance boasts a large client

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base consisting of businesses that range in size from sole proprietors to 200 employees. It employs 18 full-time workers and many independent contractors, and the company is enjoying steady growth, but Don is quick to stress that this growth is careful and measured. “We don’t outgrow our capabilities,” he affirms. “One thing that’s very good about our model is that we always know how much revenue’s coming in because it’s monthly reoccurring, but we also know what it takes to make sure the clients are happy. With this balance in mind, we don’t push massive expansions without the support to back it. So it’s a controlled kind of growth.”

Don’s client-friendly attitude is one reason Network Alliance recently received a Stevie’s Award for Best Customer Service, and the reason his stringent interview process involves a trifecta of interviews, concluding with an 8 hour session. “People can’t really give you BS for that amount of time!” he laughs. “We want to know who our employees really are before we bring them onboard.” The competence of the Network Alliance team is on full display on their homepage, where a live feed of customer feedback—both positive and negative—is constantly updating and unfiltered. Indeed, transparency on all counts is paramount to Don’s leadership style. His employees know his salary, each other’s salaries, and are involved in monthly meetings where financials are reviewed. “I’m an inclusive leader,” he says. “What I’ve learned over the years is that communication is key when it comes to business. If you leave any voids where people can make assumptions about something, those assumptions usually aren’t good.”

Communication wasn’t always Don’s strong suit.

He was a shy child, but he readily credits his mother with his emphasis on self-reliance. Raising her son alone and in a myriad of strange cities, her own fearless self-reliance was a common thread through his upbringing. Until he was nine, the family resided in a trailer park in Stafford, Virginia, and Don spent summers on his grandparent’s farm in West Virginia, where he baled hay and watched his grandfather embark on his own small entrepreneurial ventures, like selling Christmas trees during the holiday season.

Then, when his parents divorced, his mother made the decision to leave everything behind and move to Europe for her son’s well-being—a labor of love that Don has come to appreciate more and more over the years.

“Looking back on it, of course I didn’t realize how much she gave up, but she literally sacrificed everything to make sure I would be a happy, successful kid,” he remarks. “It definitely made me extremely independent, and I believe that’s why I ended up being entrepreneurial. I didn’t like 10

being told what I could or couldn’t do.” Don also credits his time in Europe as one of the major defining experiences of his life because it exposed him to other parts of the world and other cultures he might otherwise not have experienced until decades later.

Another defining moment came after his return to the states, during his college career at George Mason.

Don had become involved in extreme sports, and one day while he was rock climbing, he was in a terrible accident that tore off his foot. Thankfully, doctors were able to reattach it, but his worldview was profoundly changed from the experience. On the one hand, he came to realize that, sometimes, limits can be necessary. But he also emerged with a more robust understanding of the fragile nature of life itself. “I committed to truly living each day to the fullest,” he says. “It spurred me to embark on a two-month cross-country road trip after graduation, and it fueled me with this passion to seek success aggressively throughout my career.”

A third defining moment also came during his time at George Mason, when Don went to work for his mentor and friend, Mario Morino, as a summer intern at Morino Ventures. “Up until that point, all the business ideas I’d had were relatively small scale,” he describes.

“For example, I was constantly thinking about starting a restaurant or a bar. But when I met Mario, it exposed me to the idea that, hey, you can actually create a huge corporation that can have an enormous impact on things.

Collaborating with him opened my eyes to a much bigger world of scale for businesses, which is what expanded my vision and prompted me to realize that I wanted something like that.”

Mario liked him so much that Don was kept on at the end of the summer, continuing to intern through his senior year. After graduation and his travels around the country, Don then put his public accounting degree to use working at Beers & Cutler (now Baker Tilley, LLP), a full-service accounting and advisory firm, and within the next year, he began developing the idea that would become Network Alliance.

Don credits Beers & Cutler with giving him the strong foundation in accounting that helped him build his business so successfully. But after two years with them, Mario asked Don to consider coming back to work with him. Don was upfront with his mentor and friend: he would work full-time, but at night he planned to develop his project. Mario agreed, and Don returned as the Controller and Director of Operations.

Finally, in 2000, Network Alliance was ready to launch and bring on clients of its own, and Don, eager to be a philanthropic force in the community, wanted to ca-

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

ter to nonprofits exclusively. Mario, however, made a vital contribution to the direction of the business when he posed the idea that Don’s impact might actually be greater as a for-profit business. “Mario very wisely advised me to reconsider,” he remembers. “He reminded me that, as a for-profit business, I’d probably be more stable, and could thus help that many more people. Thanks to that advice, we’ve been able to help nonprofits significantly more than we would have been able to if I’d tried to serve that sector alone.” Indeed, Network Alliance now provides services to nonprofits at cost, with 50 percent of its profit handed along to organizations devoted to a myriad of causes, including education, children, veterans, and the environment.

In 2007, Network Alliance was up and doing well, but Don still had another important lesson to learn, and this one would be far from easy. “That was a year of many pitfalls,” he remembers. “My relationship went south. I lost a key member of my team at work. My dog died. My mom got brain cancer. All of that happened within two months—it was by far the most that had ever hit me at once. It got overwhelming, but it did reinforce the lesson I learned when I nearly lost my foot—that you have to live each day to the fullest because you don’t know what the next one will hold. Growing the business, I had become all work and no play, and I kind of lost sight of that other side of me that wanted to live life to the fullest. That trying two months really put things back into perspective, reprioritizing where I was spending my time.” With

that, Don began driving ten hours a week to spend the weekends with his mother. At the time, she was told she had between three and twelve months. Now, six years later, she’s still alive, and she and Don have made it all time well spent.

Today, Don balances the important things in life.

His emphasis on giving back extends through his business and into his personal life as he makes time to volunteer his public accounting abilities to low-income individuals, does business planning for local organizations, and holds fundraisers at company events. Directing his energy outward in this fashion is a centerpiece of his leadership philosophy, and to young people entering the working world today, he advises respect, interest, curiosity and kindness.

“One of the best things I did in college was to make friends with everybody,” he explains. “You can learn something from everything. You can start your network in college. You never know when you’re going to come across those people again—not only your professors, but everyone you’ve gone to school with. Your fellow students are going to be leaders in their businesses at some point, and some of them will be in areas of expertise that you’re going to want to know something about. If you maintain good relationships with people, it’ll help take you a long way.” The single son of a single mother, Don grew up self-reliant, but time and experience taught him that no man is an island, and that collaboration is as crucial as vision. Success, for Don, is a product of both.

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Kendall Coleman Going After It CST Group, CPAs, PC may technically be an accounting firm, and Kendall Coleman may be a Partner there, but he and his team consider themselves to be something a bit different. “As CPAs, we’re business advisors, not accountants,” he affirms. “We have extremely close relationships with our clients. Oftentimes, they consult with us about important life transitions before even telling their close family and friends. It’s those close relationships that make what I do so worthwhile.”

Indeed, whereas accounting is often thought of as a relatively mechanical science, Kendall’s success stems from the art of his personal approach to the profession—namely, his ability to infuse the experience with charisma and personality. “The actual accounting work is detailed, but what I really enjoy is working with different clients and making a financial difference for them,” he says. “I think my success doesn’t only stem from expertise; it’s also the fact that I’m more extroverted than your stereotypical CPA, but everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. The technical piece has always been rather easy for me, and the social piece comes naturally as well. I’m very comfortable in both sides of the business. “ Kendall’s dual skill set allows him to accomplish what he most loves about his profession—saving his clients’ money. “When you save someone hundreds of thousands of dollars, that’s a very tangible result,” he points out. “The satisfaction of helping someone in that way is extremely rewarding to me. If you’re an architect, you can build a physical structure that people can see; helping people by saving them their hard earned money is our concrete result that I can really wrap my arms around. That’s the ultimate goal—to figure out a way to add value so that, at the end of the day, the client feels that we have accomplished something together.”

Founded in 1973 by Charles Cocke, CST Group began as a mom-and-pop shop that was launched in a small space over a bowling alley in Fairfax, Virginia. The operation later moved to Reston, Virginia, where it resides today, 25 years later.

In the beginning, CST predominately focused on taxes and write-up work for various McDonald’s franchises in the pre-QuickBooks era. The McDonald’s Corporation has very stringent franchise reporting requirements, so the work served as a big book of business for CST. “Through its first thirty years, CST was very much a lifestyle firm,” says Kendall. “In the last ten years, however, we felt that we were such a great organization with a strong business model, passion for success, and great people, so we decided to move forward and scale the organization. As a result, we’ve doubled our size since then.”

Today, CST has seven partners and between forty and fifty employees, over 35 of which are CPAs. Kendall and his team provide a range of core competencies that include tax return preparation, assurance work, financial statement preparation, and estate planning. They focus on uppermiddle and high net worth individuals and closely held corporations across the country, with a broad spectrum of clients that includes the government contracting, healthcare, nonprofit, real estate and development, construction, restaurant, and hospitality industries. Developing expertise across a diverse array of industries in this manner helps to safeguard CST against the instability of cyclical markets so that it can provide better services to all its clientele.

“At first glance we appear to be your standard public accounting firm, but we set ourselves apart by serving as a proactive business advisor to our clients,” Kendall details. “Taxes, in reality, are really just filling out overly complicated government mandated forms by specified deadlines, which many accountants can do. The crucial part is how you approach tax planning and how to ensure that the scenario most advantageous to our clients winds up properly reported on that form. We are committed to ensure our clients pay the legal minimum in taxes using a proactive, forward-thinking approach. What’s more, CST doesn’t take clients just to take clients. Rather, we only enter into business relationships with individuals or entities that we can truly provide added value for.”

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CST’s business model is also unique in that all new employees are taught both the tax and assurance sides of the business. “At some point they migrate to one discipline or the other, but most of our staff is capable of doing both,” says Kendall. “I think that, if you don’t understand both, you can’t advise your client thoroughly, because what might be good for taxes might be bad for third party reporting. We don’t bifurcate between tax and audit, but instead look at the client’s situation as a whole, always making sure we’re examining both sides of the equation.”

Kendall joined the firm in 2001 after working as a Director of Finance for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, one of the largest international public accounting firms today. “Working at Ogilvy, or any private organization for that matter, was monotonous, making sure the checks got cut, making sure the invoices went out, validating how we did compared to budget, reconciling the general ledger,” he remembers. “When you’re in private accounting like that, you’re simply overhead, and there are only so many professional and financial opportunities available.” It was a safe, adequate situation, but he knew the world had something more to offer, and he went after it.

Kendall has been inclined to reach for that great beyond since his childhood in Charleston, West Virginia.

“It was a small town and a great place to grow up,” he recalls. “I knew from an early age, however, that the world was much bigger than anything West Virginia had to offer, and that I would eventually leave to explore it.” His parents divorced when he was very young, and spending summers in Orlando with his father afforded him the opportunity to see other ways of life.

Kendall’s mother grew up in rural West Virginia on a farm and got a job with the state at the age of eighteen, where she worked for thirty years. His father worked for Lockheed Martin most of his career. Both parents remarried to wonderful individuals who were very supportive stepparents. His stepfather had lied about his age to join the Navy at age 17 just to have food to eat, but he grew up to be a successful engineer for large companies, including Honeywell. His stepmother treated him like he was her own son; it was a nurturing—albeit strict—atmosphere to grow up in.

As a youth, he was always very active in sports like basketball, football, tennis, and cross country, but when he made bad grades one semester in seventh grade because he hadn’t applied himself, his parents pulled him off the basketball team. As a result, he wasn’t able to play in the championship game and he committed to never earn bad grades after that. “I knew I would have to be 14

successful, or else, I just didn’t know in what,” he laughs.

Kendall may not have had a clear professional goal as a child, but that didn’t stop him from working hard and earning spending money. He mowed lawns in the summer and shoveled snow in the winter, and he got his first job at the age of sixteen as a delivery boy for Oakwood Pharmacy, the family-owned operation in his hometown where he used to buy baseball cards. The pharmacy had a Dodge Dart car that would stall out if he took his foot off the gas at any time, and he would deliver medicine to elderly people around town.

Of his high school class of around 300, about 250 went to college. “There was a sense of motivation in the area where I grew up, and I always knew I’d pursue higher education,” he reflects. In college, Kendall enrolled in business school and selected accounting for his major because it would provide a good baseline for anything he might choose to do. Upon graduation, he worked for the West Virginia Tax Department for two months while he put his resume together. He then came to Northern Virginia for a football game, made some good connections, and was soon hired at a public accounting firm in the area. He stayed there for seven years and was about to make partner when the company was sold to CBIZ, which prompted him to leave and accept the position at Ogilvy.

By all accounts, the year that ensued should have been among the greatest of Kendall’s life. He started at Ogilvy as a financial analyst but was promoted to Director of Finance after only a month. He then moved to a big, beautiful house on a nice block in Ashburn, Virginia, that he had designed himself. It had the trappings of perfection, but one vital component was missing—people. “I had always been surrounded by family and friends, but living in that town and working in that capacity posed a considerable vacuum when it came to people I could really connect with. It was actually one of my lowest points.

I grew up in West Virginia where it’s rude not to say hi to someone, and I was ready to get back to an atmosphere that was conducive to that.”

When Kendall accepted the position at CST, he wasn’t confident he would like it. “I chose CST because they were the same size as my earlier accounting firm, they used the same software, and they served the same client base, so it seemed that I’d do well there,” he explains. “But it turned out to be a very different firm from my prior firm in that it encouraged such strong, authentic relationships between people. After about a year, I really hit my stride.”

And now, after eleven years, that stride continues.

Kendall currently supervises over 15 professionals on

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

a daily basis and handles an array of personnel matters with a management style of professionalism, openness, and honesty. “I’m fun yet firm,” he laughs. “I joke around with our employees, but I’m also very straightforward and tell people what they need to hear. This is based on a foundation of mutual respect. The mindset is not that they work for me; it’s that we work together. We’re all professionals, and we all do work in our own way.”

Thanks to this leadership philosophy and the hard work of their administrative staff, CST has won “Best Places to Work” awards five times so far. “We try to do a lot of out-of-the-ordinary things to brighten the days of the people who work here, whether it’s bringing in masseuses during tax season or holding ice cream socials to bring the team together,” he says. “We also work four-day weeks all summer when business is a little less hectic.”

In addition to his duties to clients, Kendall also strives to lead the firm to success by serving on its Marketing Committee, Hiring Committee, Finance Committee, and Personnel Committee. Beyond that, he and his colleagues are striving to maintain the momentum of growth they’ve started. “I’d like to see us take this firm and continue to grow it so it becomes something that, when I retire, still perpetuates itself,” he says. “Our goal is to grow it without changing that fundamental identity of being a fun place to work that adds true value for clients.”

In advising young entrepreneurs entering the business world today, Kendall stresses the importance of personal evolution. “Once you get into the real world, you have to change your mind set in order to be successful,” he emphasizes. “In college, my fraternity brothers and I stayed up late and went out often, but once we graduated, we all knew it was game time. We got jobs, worked hard, put the hours in, developed networks of people, and went after it. So many kids get out of school and get a job without pursuing a career with real drive. If you want to be successful, you have to start early. Don’t wait till you’re 28 or 29. There’s a window of time from when you get out of college to age 30 where you can really differentiate yourself and set yourself up to be successful.”

Beyond this, Kendall’s story emphasizes that it’s the people that make life truly worthwhile, so aim to reach out get to know the people around you. Conversely, make sure to let them know you. “I’ve seen so many instances where my colleagues leave meetings with young people thinking that they’re great, but not know what they do,” Kendall remarks. “Don’t be afraid to tell people what you do, or to ask for business or a referral. At the end of the day, make sure the people you meet know who you are and what you do. Have an elevator speech prepared, because you never know who you might cross paths with.

Don’t hold back; go after it.”

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C.R. George Dove Collaborative Leadership In Annapolis, Maryland, in the 1950s, a high school freshman sat at a table of the local Kiwanis Club, having just finished his meal of chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas. He was there for an annual oratorical contest, and in just a few minutes, he would give a speech titled “Freedom: Our Most Important Heritage.” As he watched the first and second contestants take the podium and deliver their addresses, he could feel his dinner churning inside of him. Then it was his turn. Rising from his seat, the boy wove through the tables and took his place at the front of the room. He leveled his eyes at the audience and said, “Freedom, Our Most Important Heritage [long pause] I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

As he fled the hall, few in the audience could have predicted that he’d be back the following year to win the contest.

Fewer still could have predicted that this boy would grow up to become a successful architect, lauded as a gifted public speaker and a natural-born leader. But then, George Dove’s version of leadership has always been a little different.

“Leadership” is a word that conjures archetypal images: an officer commanding troops, a CEO presiding over a meeting, a political figure guiding a nation. With these associations in mind, it’s easy to assume that leadership inherently occurs as a dictate from the top, but George would be the first to tell you that’s not always the most effective case. He may have come a long way since the anxiety of that first Kiwanis Club contest, but to this day, he exercises a healthy degree of humility: he shrugs off praise, doesn’t like to toot his own horn, and values his work for the results it yields others more than for the recognition it brings him. Yet despite his aversion to seeking the limelight, if there’s work to be done, he will step forward to lead the effort. And when he does, he opts to lead through partnership, guiding others in a collaborative process toward consensus for the greater good. It’s a lifelong strategy that has earned him respect and admiration, but more importantly, it has contributed to the success and wellbeing of the people and projects he’s labored for.

Nowhere is this truer than at WDG Architecture, the Washington, DC, based firm in which George is a managing principal. Founded in 1938 by Edwin Weihe, WDG is the oldest architecture firm in the region. In its early years, Weihe called the company Weihe & Associates and ran it with his partner, Virginia Gibbs, at a time when it was rare for a woman to be a partner in a major architecture firm. When Gibbs and her husband relocated, Weihe continued on his own, operating the firm as a sole proprietorship for a number of years before bringing in additional partners. By 1971, Weihe, Black and Jeffries was prolific for its size, taking on prominent projects in areas like Crystal City and Skyline with a team of roughly twelve.

And that’s when George Dove was brought on board as an associate.

Twenty-nine at the time, George had already lived an interesting life—one rife with opportunities to develop the leadership skills that would help him rise in his new company. Born in Annapolis in 1942, he enjoyed a fair amount of freedom growing up, despite being an only child. Both parents worked, and though they encouraged their son in his endeavors, they never sought to direct his activities or future. “My parents supported my decisions, but they didn’t put decisions in front of me to choose from,” George recalls. “I was allowed to pursue whatever interests I wanted.” And from those interests, he chose architecture at an early age.

For his seventh-grade shop class, he was assigned the task of designing a garage. Upon review of the completed project, his teacher announced, somewhat prophetically, that George should be an architect. The idea stuck, and later that year when George had to prepare a career paper researching a particular field, he chose architecture and threw himself into the challenge of learning about the profession. “I didn’t know anything about architecture,” he says. “I sought out two or three practicing architects in the city and interviewed them, asking them what the field was about and what my role might be. I even reached out to famous architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright. Once the assignment was complete,

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I was determined to pursue a career in architecture and never looked back.”

Of course, it would be some time before that dream became a reality. In high school, George discovered what his parents, in their respect for his self-determination, might have known all along: he had a knack for leadership. Though he was a self-professed “nerd” as a teenager, his peers would invite him to be their leader in a variety of capacities. He soon found himself serving as president of his senior class, as well as several other school organizations. “People understood, even at an early age, that I had the ability to synthesize disparate ideas into a coordinated thought process that made sense to people,” he explains.

“Plus, I was willing to step up and take over where others were reticent.”

When it came time for college, architecture school was the natural choice, and George chose Penn State because it made the most sense financially. The engineering and architecture program he encountered at Penn State wasn’t top tier, but as is his habit, he opted to make the best of it. He and three other students emerged as leaders of his class, pushing themselves to get the most out of their education through self-teaching and studying abroad at the Architectural Association and the University of London.

When he graduated in 1965, the U.S. was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and like so many young men, George found himself susceptible to the draft. He had a plan, though. To avoid ending up an infantryman in the Army, he applied for a competitive position in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. He had researched the corps during his senior year and determined that it would be a good fit for an architecture graduate such as himself. The Navy agreed, and he was admitted.

That September, he attended Naval Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island, and upon completion, began several years of active duty in the Navy. “It was a terrific experience akin to another college education,” he recalls.

“I had amazing responsibilities for a 23 to 26-year-old.”

Early in his service, he was assigned to Alaska, and with his supervisor 1,100 miles away, he had the responsibility to negotiate contracts and change orders with potentially disreputable contractors and their workers. “I was this kid who they tried to take advantage of, but I kept winning,” he remembers.

George also won the esteem of the Navy photographers stationed with him. Though he didn’t officially have anybody working for him, these enlisted men “adopted” him and became “his men,” so to speak—another instance of George being elected de facto leader. When he left Alaska to return to Washington, the men honored him with a special gift: a hizonith, a navigational 18

aid salvaged from an old shipwreck, that he treasures to this day.

Back at the Washington Navy Yard, George’s responsibilities only increased. He was put in charge of selecting architects for Navy and Air Force projects in the region, and architectural giants would sit across the table from him—a 25-year-old newbie to the field—and vie for a job that was his to assign.

In 1968, George left the Navy and went to work at a small firm before enrolling in graduate school. He was accepted to Harvard, but due to timing constraints, he ended up completing his graduate studies at a The Catholic University of America instead. Then, in 1970, he married his wife, Anna.

In 1971, George, a new husband and father to Anna’s daughter from a previous marriage, had a choice to make: stay where he was, in a firm that was not doing well financially, or move on. He opted for the unknown, and that’s when he went to work for Edwin Weihe.

Weihe was innovative and had designed many buildings in the region, but he was considered something of an “outlaw” among purists in the field because he was doing work for “dirty developers.” “Of course today, everybody kills to work for developers,” he laughs. Undeterred by the prospect of doing commercial architecture, George quickly became an asset to the firm—so much so that when he decided to leave the company in 1978 to strike out on his own, they were loath to let him go. “I was thirty-six years old,” George explains, “and I thought, ‘I’ve been here six years and there’s no room for more leadership in a firm of this size.’ I had been moonlighting with another friend, designing churches and houses, so we agreed to start our own business.”

With that, the two set up shop, and George called a meeting of the firm’s four partners to announce that he needed to explore new options. He offered to stay on as long as was necessary to ease the transition, but insisted that his decision was final. The partners took a few days to talk, and they came back with a surprising offer: they wanted to make George a full partner in the firm, tripling his salary.

Still, he declined, stating that there were too many things about the way the firm functioned that needed to be updated and changed, and he didn’t see that happening, so he wanted to try a new path. Their response was more surprising still: they offered George the opportunity to lead the company in the new directions he believed were right. “You can make whatever changes you want,” they told him.

George discussed the offer with his then new partner, and they both agreed he’d be crazy not to accept it. And that was the start of George’s leadership of Weihe, Black, Jeffries, Strassman and Dove.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

One of the first changes he made was to draw up a partnership agreement, which officially set up the firm as an equal partnership. By agreeing to the new structure, the partners established a philosophy of governance that removed Weihe as figurehead and instead made him one of five. From there, George began to expand and grow the firm, increasing their office space and employee base and working toward more diversification and outreach.

Through it all, the tactic of collaboration through partnership remained the touchstone of George’s leadership style.

Today, the long-term effects of his efforts are obvious. The firm has grown to 150 people in two offices in D.C. and Dallas, conducting diverse projects around the country and the world. It is a leading firm in seven niche markets, including hospitality, office buildings, multifamily housing, student housing, and senior housing, and operates a full-service interior design group. In addition, it’s begun taking on government work, including designing the headquarters for the U.S. Coast Guard and recently winning the contract to design the National Science Foundation headquarters. “We’re a blend of the key components of commercial and institutional architecture,” George says of the firm’s approach. “And because we’re also planners and urban designers, we’re often asked to take on the master planning of large phased projects where we bring all of our diverse niche components together to create a truly mixed-use environment. Our clients are really the major movers and shakers of the development world, and we love that.”

That George has been a key figure in these changes is indisputable, but partnership is still the name of the game.

He is now one of six managing principals of the firm, and all decisions are made by consensus. The relationship between the principals is based on equality and trust. Each person is expected to contribute to the good of the firm, but all earnings go into a communal pot, so if one person has a good year and another does not, financially speaking, it evens out. Their current name, WDG Architecture, is illustrative of the firm’s tendency to underplay ego. In honor of their founder, the name “Weihe” was maintained through two more permutations—The Weihe Partnership, Architects and Planners, and Weihe Design Group— but in 2000, the firm opted to simplify its label to WDG Architecture.

Today, George continues a gradual effort he began in the mid-’90s: reducing his hands-on management of the firm in order to distribute the responsibilities throughout the partnership—a move he views as a strategy for long-

term success. While he was once the face of the company and handled the bulk of day-to-day responsibilities, he believes that a broader leadership model will ensure that the company will thrive for the next 75 years, just as it has to this point.

Through it all, George’s spirit of collaborative leadership and partnership has extended to other areas of his life as well. He’s always stretching his time to volunteer to head committees, and these days, he teaches architecture at The Catholic University of America where he received his master’s. He enjoys giving his students the kind of freedom he reveled in as a young man, challenging them to solve problems creatively, rather than directing them.

“They love that,” he says. “They might not get it right, but they love that someone isn’t telling them what to do.”

At home, Anna remains his partner in every sense of the word, weathering with him the ups and downs of the economy and his field with pragmatic good humor. Born a coal-miner’s daughter in West Virginia, she left home and made her own way in life, and is, in George’s words, independent and “a consummate leader.” Together, they have their daughter and a son, born in 1974, who donated a kidney to his father in 2007.

In 2010, George was made the recipient of The Centennial Award presented by the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, an organization of which George is a Fellow (an honor in its own right). The award is bestowed annually upon an architect who has made “a substantial contribution to the chapter, the profession, and the community” that goes “above and beyond that which is normally expected of an individual.” Edwin Weihe had received the award twenty years prior and said it felt like being “struck by lightning.” For George, it was a humbling moment that represented the fulfillment of his professional career.

Still, given the choice of recognition and applause versus results, George will opt for the latter. “It feels good to be doing something that I know is valuable, and that’s contributing to my firm’s success and further enfranchising my partners,” he says of his life’s work. “I don’t enjoy it so much for what it gives me, but for what I’m able to give others.” For all the time he’s spent in leadership positions, he views himself as more of an enabler than a leader, striving to give people the tools they need to continue on and succeed on their own ideas and merits. It’s collaborative leadership at its finest, and it’s what has allowed George to truly make a difference in the lives of his colleagues, clients, family, and friends.

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Colin Eagen Without Limits When Colin Eagen was eight years old, his family spent a happy Thanksgiving at his aunt and uncle’s house. After the meal, however, the young boy found his happiness curbed when his uncle, a factory supervisor, wrapped up some leftovers and headed to work at eight in the evening on a holiday.

Colin was so distraught at witnessing his uncle forced to leave so quickly after dinner that, on the drive home with his parents, he announced his stance on the issue. “I remember saying that I never wanted to have a job where I had to come in at a certain time and leave at a certain time, with a limit on how much I was going to make during that time,” he recalls. “I was only eight years old, but I had figured out that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and that I wanted a job without limits, whether that meant great success or great failure.” Now the founder and CEO of E Group, a business dedicated to providing organizations with the tools to recognize and award team members and deepen company culture, Colin is living that childhood dream, learning from the failures and celebrating the successes that come from living life to the fullest: without limits.

At its essence, E Group is the flourishing product of the marriage between an old, product-centered business and a new, technology-oriented, Internet-focused business. Serving large Fortune 100 companies like ExxonMobil, Marriott, the National Honors Society, Hyatt, BAE Systems, and Abbott Laboratories, they impart the tools that allow their managers to recognize people and preserve that human side of business that makes work worthwhile. “We provide a market for organizations to engage their workforce, their members, and their sales channels to communicate and recognize achievements,” Colin explains. The company, which is comprised of twenty-five employees and numerous close contractors, is closing in on its thirtieth birthday, and reached $20 million in sales for the 2012 year, with expectations to grow by 25 percent in 2013. This remarkable growth stems in large part from E Group’s unique and robust technology platform, its defined process for designing value-added

programs and packaged approaches for clients, and its solutions-oriented team of sales professionals.

Colin began the company right out of college, originally as a means to save up enough to afford law school. He was first hired in sales as a manufacturer’s representative, selling plaques and trophies to businesses for straight commission. There were no guarantees and no benefits, but also no limits, and within that variability, Colin thrived, earning a six-figure income in his first year after college on commission alone.

Unlike many of his fellow agents, Colin quickly noticed that the customer was craving something more. “I realized the customer wanted products to recognize their employees for a job well done, and I wanted to address that need,” he recalls.

“So I expanded, moving from a broker to a distributer, where I would buy products and resell them. I essentially built the infrastructure and created the services around that.” As demand grew, he added a design department, accounting and finance department, customer service department, and eventually an account management department, all of which broadened the spectrum of products and services he could offer the client.

The company, which was named for the first initial of Colin’s last name, has successfully reinvented itself four times in order to keep up with the changing economy. One of the greatest reinventions was moving to the realm of e-commerce, which was built slowly over time by Colin’s decision to reinvest the money he made back into the company. “I never went to any investors for loans,” he says. “We’re buying products from all over the world, so we do use a bank credit line, but I’m very proud to be able to look back on the company’s history and know that all investments were self-sustained.”

As the business grew, taking on more employees and clients while offering more products and service, Colin has continually streamlined the company, keying into the fact that at the heart of his business, clients are simply looking for a way to engage people and increase performance. “When we realized this, we began build-

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ing the technology to support the clients’ requirements,” he recalls. “We’ve focused on performance management, asking how we can help drive behaviors that will bring results to the organization. As a result, we’re a one-stop shop for all things when you want to engage an audience, whether through communications, or through rewards and awards.”

Colin grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, with his younger brother and two younger sisters. His mother stayed at home with the children, while his father was an entrepreneurial man of many trades and launched a number of small businesses, including a bar and restaurant and a vending machine company, and ultimately ending up in promotional products.

Colin attended Shippensburg University on a wrestling scholarship, but during his freshman year, he was injured to such an extent that he needed two knee surgeries, which ultimately ended his wrestling career. “I was used to spending so much time and energy on working out and practicing, so I had this void to fill,” he recalls.

“I got really into school and student government, and eventually I became the President of the student body.”

His experience in college led him to believe he wanted to become a lawyer, and since he had both family and friends in the field, he thought it would be a good fit. He applied to law school and was accepted, but decided it would be best to take a year off after graduating to earn some money to pay for his further education.

Shortly after graduating, he began his job as a manufacturer’s representative, where he discovered the demand for employee and client engagement tools. While he began formulating his ideas for E Group, his father invited him to take over his business—a proposal Colin had to decline. “I had another idea about what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it,” he recalls. “So I went on a different track, and he not only understood, but also admired that.”

While Colin had worked for the family business every summer during his college years, his father was not surprised by his son’s decision.

Even as a young child, Colin was determined to find his own unique way to make an extra dollar. His motivation as a seven year old, however, was to earn enough money to buy a Go-Kart. “I had a paper route in the hospital, which was considered the ‘bad route’ because it was more involved than just delivering papers,” he comments. “At the age of seven, I would go door-todoor selling newspapers from my wagon at two different hospitals. There were new faces in the hospital every Sunday, so I couldn’t just deliver—I had to make sales.” It was a challenge Colin enjoyed, not only because he made 22

a five-cent commission on the papers he sold and earned more in one day than his friends made in five, but also because he realized his true happiness was in working with people. “I’ve always liked people,” he smiles. “If you asked my hobby, I would say it’s being around people and building relationships with them.”

After eighteen months, Colin had saved up enough to buy a small Go-Kart, just large enough for him and his brother to squeeze onto together. His mother would drive the two boys to a parking lot, where they would ride around for hours. Eventually, she decided to leave them there while she went home to do her errands, telling them she’d be back in an hour and under no circumstances could they go in the road. Naturally, as soon as she was out of sight, they drove to the baseball field and to friends’ houses, puttering down the main road.

“Eventually, the police saw us, so they chased after us,” he laughs. “We tried to lose them because we knew our mother would take away the Go-Kart if she found out we’d been in the street, but they cornered us, put our GoKart in their car, and took us home.”

Despite his run-in with the cops, Colin continued to learn from the various jobs he worked through his youth. He sold Cokes in the stands at Penn State games, thinking up clever themes to match the games and dressing as such to set himself apart from his competition. He also hired his younger brother and sisters to sell Cokes for him at various concession stands during halftime so customers didn’t have to wait in line. Colin also worked for K Mart in its Lawn and Garden Center, loving the fact that he didn’t have to wear a tie. “I tried to make it fun for the customers,” he remembers. “I had a uniform, and my mom embroidered ‘The K Mart Kid’ on the back. That’s what people knew me as. None of the jobs I’ve ever had have felt like work to me because I approach them with passion.”

In high school, Colin worked as a waiter and found he had a deep fondness for commission. “There was a direct connection between the effort I put in and the amount of tips I took home at night,” he said. “So when I graduated, I knew I wanted to work strictly in commission. That way, there was no limit to what I could make. It was all on me. It was a challenge, and it was fun.”

Despite his success in life, Colin has met failure as well, though not through E Group itself. The lowest point he faced occurred when he invested in companies he knew too little about because he was too busy with his own business to truly investigate them. “I honestly didn’t take a day off until I was 28, and that takes a toll,” he remarks. “I was flattered that people were asking me to invest, and I thought invest-

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

ing would further help my business, but I ended up losing money. I was very naïve about the risks associated with those businesses, but it taught me important lessons about investing, about decision making, about myself, and about people. Because the problem in those situations wasn’t the businesses, it was the people. It also led me to deeply appreciate the kind of sustainable, profitable business that I had in E Group.”

Despite the mistakes made along the way, E Group is thriving today, and Colin has proven himself a visionary with a true skill for leadership. Of all his accomplishments with the company, however, he feels most proud that some of the first employees he ever hired are still with the company today, after a quarter century. “I believe in leading by example,” he says. “Say what you do, and do what you say. Above all else, however, trust must be a foundational factor in any relationship, whether it be professional or personal. Once you have that trust in your relationships, a lot of things are possible, so a key component of leadership is building and maintaining trust.”

While cultivating the integrity and positive reputation of his company, Colin has also kept his family a top priority—something he began to build well over twenty years ago. It started when Colin, a young entrepreneur, was four years out of college and arrived at a party, where he met a striking woman named Stacy. “We talked for most of the night, and by the time I left, I knew I had met the woman of my dreams,” he remembers. “When you know, you know. The only problem was, I was in a relationship with someone else at the time.”

That relationship wasn’t progressing, and though Colin didn’t have any reason to believe Stacy would even consider dating him, he knew he would forever regret it if he didn’t take a risk, follow his heart, and try.

Colin did, in fact, take that leap, and today, he and Stacy are happily married with two daughters in college.

“I have two major quotes that I try to live by, both in my personal life and in business,” he explains. “The first is that 80 percent of life is about just showing up, and the rest of it is what you do once you get there. The second concept, and perhaps the most important, is to live with no regrets. I didn’t want to spend my life wondering if Stacy would have gone out on a date with me. I never want to look back on a situation and regret that I didn’t do something. Those are usually tough times with tough decisions, but I try to make the choice that I know I won’t look back on and wish I had done something different.”

While E Group was already in business at the time they met, Stacy has played a vital role in keeping the company on track and moving full speed ahead through the years. “If I’m contemplating a problem, she starts at the end and works backwards to the beginning, asking how we want it to turn out, and how we can get there,” he says. “She has a remarkable calmness and a keen ability to see other people’s perspectives. She’s very strategic.”

When the two are not focused on the company, they are enjoying their close-knit, supportive family. And while the Eagens have supported countless charities with donations of both time and money, they focus primarily on giving back to the private schools their daughters have attended, all of which rely heavily on donations.

Although Colin’s career is marked with years of success, in many ways, his journey is still young. His father has always been one of his greatest mentors, so when he lost his recent battle to cancer, Colin began looking on the world with new eyes.

“At his funeral, there was standing room only,” he says. “My father built so many strong relationships through his life, and everyone came up to me and told me things he had done for them. They were all just nice things that he had done that he never told us about. And that made me realize that, really, it’s all about helping people. He had no regrets, even when his business went through rough times. In life and in business, it’s all about the people. Relationships the true building blocks of success—that’s why we’ve had some of our clients since our inception over two decades ago, and that’s why some of the people I’ve shared professional relationships, even people from all over the world, feel comfortable coming to me with personal concerns as well. If you earn people’s trust and are able to keep it, you’ll be able to look back on your life and see a job well done.”

In further advising young people entering the working world today, Colin stresses passion as the common thread found in every successful person. “They believe in what they’re doing, and they’re connected to it at every level,” he says. “That kind of engagement is contagious in an organization, and in life. When you have that passion, it’s not about earning enough money to retire.

It’s about the people and energy and good you’re a part of.” Indeed, living life without limits means embracing success and failure as two sides of the same coin, and that coin is passion. And as Colin has found, it’s the only coin that truly allows one to look for the best in others and give the best one has.

Colin Eagen

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Al Espinoza Imagination and Reinvention Experiences in childhood and adolescence often shape an individual’s attitudes, ambitions and successes well into adulthood. Many successful entrepreneurs are born into privilege, while others are born to supportive, nurturing parents who encourage their intelligence and independence. Al Espinoza, by contrast, had none of the early advantages typically associated with success later in life. His mother suffered from bipolar disorder, while his father was unstable, as well as verbally and physically abusive. Both parents were fervent Jehovah’s Witnesses who forbade extracurricular activities and friendships outside the church, and these harsh restrictions alienated Al and his three siblings from other potential sources of support outside the family.

At age eleven, Al’s father took a job in Idaho and moved the family from their home in Los Angeles. Growing up halfHispanic in a relatively homogenous town, Al experienced even more isolation from children his own age. And although his father worked as a professional engineer, the family struggled financially. “I always felt poor,” he recalls. “We never had anything, and we had to shop at secondhand stores. We weren’t dirt poor, but we were definitely on the lower middle class end of the scale.” His oldest sister, also suffering from bipolar disorder, committed suicide when Al was in his teens. But for Al, the defining moment of this tumultuous and sometimes traumatic upbringing was his decision to build a better life for himself.

“I was sixteen,” he remembers. “My father and I had always had a bad relationship, but one day during a particularly nasty argument he threatened to kill me. So I hid in the basement of our house. I had to stay there until he cooled down, and I remember thinking, ‘ I can’t control the first part of my life, but I can control the second part of my life. As soon as I’m out and can control my own life, I’m going to make sure it’s good.’ That’s something I always think of: making sure the second part of my life is better than the first.” Al had always been an excellent student, and after that life changing fight with his father, he moved in with friends—managers of the local

sandwich shop where he worked—and applied himself entirely to his pursuit of success.

As a student of Junior Achievement, a nonprofit youth organization that partners with local businesses to teach financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurial skills to young people, Al encountered local businessmen and read books by larger-scale entrepreneurs.

When his father told him to consider a career as a plumber, Al applied himself ever more fervently to his goals of academic success, college admission, and financial independence. The sandwich shop owners, Steve and Margot, were the positive role models he had craved throughout childhood. Although he had been born into one life, he refused to let it define him, working each day to build a new one through study, hard work, and positive relationships.

Thanks to his vision and hard work, Al was accepted into the Idaho State University, and, with his new credit card, he put an $800 down payment on a $20,000 house near school. After his freshman year, he was offered a summer job as an intern at the computer department’s engineering facility, and when the summer ended, he was offered a full time job by the government contractor overseeing the work. Eager to embrace full financial independence, at age 19, Al accepted the job, transitioning from a fulltime student to a night school student. Lockheed Martin later took over the contract and, seizing an opportunity to leave Idaho, Al took a position that required him to relocate to Washington, DC. Never one to shy away from change, Al took his relocation as an opportunity for a second reinvention. “It really opened my eyes,” he affirms. “Coming to DC, I was kind of like a babe in the woods. Everything was new to me.” Ever the education junkie, Al began pursuing his MBA at Loyola University. He completed that degree and continued working with Lockheed, but over time, he began to wonder if striking out on his own would be a wiser course of action. “I saw how much they billed me out to the customer, and I knew how much they paid me, so I thought it made sense to try to start my own company,”

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he remembers. With that, Al set his sights on entrepreneurship. Of the transition, he says, “In the government contracting environment, I was able to build relationships very quickly. Within 18 months to 2 years of starting a project, I convinced one of the leads to support me going out on my own, and they agreed to subcontract under me. That’s when I became incorporated. I hadn’t dreamed of becoming a government contractor as a kid, but I was here in DC, and government contracting is where it’s at.”

Assessing his surroundings, Al built a new vision for himself: successful entrepreneur and government contractor. The next step was getting others to share that vision—something that, in the cutthroat world of contract work, involved more than a little endurance and tenacity.

It was 1997, and Innotion Enterprises was born. Its name, a nod to “innovation” and the “notion” that became a business, is the essence of Al’s approach of implementing ideas through innovation. But it was hardly smooth sailing right away, and the following years were an exercise in determination. For Al, it was a period of intense single-mindedness, punctuated by successes but often bookended by scrambling. He studied the agencies he wanted to work with carefully, and, like himself, his company was ever evolving, constantly molding itself to the needs of a rapidly changing market. “Everything I’ve done with the company has been chasing where the opportunity was,” he says. “Wherever there was growth in the industry was where I focused my efforts. We started in IT because it was the virgin field that needed a lot of support at the time, but it’s not our core today. When that field got overcrowded, we went into cyber security, and even though that’s still a great space, we saw opportunity in the market of asset management with foreclosures and the whole housing debacle, so we diversified into that as well.” The business deftly moved from arena to arena, and even as they excelled in the IT world, Al’s natural love of real estate spurred him to again refine his goals.

With that, he set his sights on working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

In the beginning, Al saw far more rejections than triumphs. “I basically knocked on HUD’s door for at least three years, and I’d get the same response,” he remarks. “I didn’t have enough experience, qualifications, or track performance. It was quite frustrating.” In a meeting with a HUD contract officer, he even offered to complete the work for free, eager to build a portfolio and reputation by any means necessary. Al laughingly recalls that the officer scolded him, “The government can’t take things for free!”

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His hard work and determination eventually began to pay off, however. Six months later, he was invited to discuss the possibility of a $3 million contract award, which was far larger than any of Innotion’s other contracts at the time. HUD ultimately couldn’t offer him the contract, but Al reached out to a potential partner and proposed that they team up. The partner agreed, and the new duo won and successfully implemented the contract over the next few years. Al finally had his foot in the door with HUD, and he leveraged that new position to obtain ever-larger contracts.

Today, Innotion Enterprises employs 50 people and, in 2012, boasted revenues of $45 million. Last year, the Washington Business Journal named them the #2 fastest growing company in the region, and moving forward, Al sees the company maintaining its characteristic opportunistic fluidity, moving from asset management contracts into the next up-cycle in real estate. “I see us transitioning from what we’re doing, going into real estate sales, brokerages, mortgages, and titles services,” he says, with evident excitement. “We rode the real estate trend down, and now we’re going to ride it back up.” To that end, the business is shifting away from government contracting. “I’m confident that, just two years from now, we’ll be completely reinvented once again,” he muses.

And Al himself is more than along for the ride. He is currently enrolled in law school, and he clearly isn’t in it for just a degree. Once again, he has a vision for his future and the fortitude to see it through. A year and a half ago, he took a sabbatical to complete his first year full-time in Florida, and now, he’s pursuing his JD parttime at nearby American University. “Law has a role in everything we do,” he explains. “Understanding the law is crucial. The more you can understand the environment you’re in—especially the legal environment—the better.

And not only is it beneficial, but I also find it fascinating.

And I hope this example shows the kids that it’s never too late to go back to school.”

Growing up as he did, it’s hardly a wonder that Al’s wife, Dawn, and their children are of central importance to his life. Dawn has been a constant source of support through business highs and lows. “She always told me, ‘I never had any doubt about you.’ She’s a beautiful person,” he avows. “She’s very kind of heart—the type of person everyone loves.” Al lists his daughter and son as his greatest source of pride, and hopes that his personal legacy will fuel their growth into responsible, passionate, and productive adults who shape their own futures. He also values community participation and serves as a member of the Shady Grove Foundation Board, while Dawn serves on the board of the Hope for Henry organization

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

to provide support to terminally ill children as well as running her own company, DesignerGals.Com. In advising young people entering the working world today, Al reflects on his own experiences and reminds us with serious certainty that we can do whatever we want in life. “It sounds trite, but it’s true, and thinking to the contrary holds a lot of people back,” he remarks.

“Self-doubt is our biggest obstacle. A lot of people, for instance, think that business is for other people—that they don’t have this qualification that would allow them to run a business. But that’s not true at all.”

Indeed, as Al’s pathway from hardship to success indicates, life is measured not by where you begin, but where you end up. “The power is in the delta—the change you enact yourself,” he affirms. “Once people realize that they’re in control of what they do and where they go, the world just unfolds before them.” Imagination sets the stage for the future, and determination sets the events of change in motion, resulting in the kind of reinvention that built a flourishing business, a loving family, and a life to truly be proud of.

Al Espinoza

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John Foster-Bey Small Steps for Big Changes When John Foster-Bey woke up on the pavement in the middle of a highway, he could barely stay conscious long enough to wonder how he had gotten there.

The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital, sore and bandaged, with the faint recollection of a car accident and a growing panic over the other passengers in his car—all kids who had been accompanying him to a Youth Development conference at the University of Vermont.

Before the accident, John had been working in a small Connecticut town for a youth center as a Deputy Director for a new program called Positive Youth Development.

“We were trying to engage and redevelop the whole community to make it better for young people to grow up in,” he says.

The program required the directors to go to conferences all over the area, including one at the University of Vermont. Because that particular conference fell over summer vacation, they decided to take a handful of students to join in on the experience, so John took one car full of kids, and the program’s director took another.

On the drive home from the conference, one of the students, who had recently earned her driver’s license, wanted to practice driving, so he decided to let her take over for a while. They had been going along smoothly, until suddenly, a motorcycle cut them off. The student lost control of the car, and John was thrown from his seat into the middle of the highway. “My leg and lower back were badly broken, and I was suffering from internal injuries, but when you’re that badly hurt all at once, you don’t feel most of the pain,” he recalls. “Even if I had felt it, I was too worried about the kids to notice.”

Thankfully, everyone else in the car suffered little more than whiplash, and while it took John well over a year to fully recover, from relearning how to walk to having a spinal fusion, he knew he was lucky to be alive. “It was a defining moment for me, because even though I was doing meaningful things for the community, I realized I could be doing even more,” he recalls. “I wanted to open up some more doors and tap deeper into my abili-

ties to help the people around me, so I earned my MBA and started applying for different jobs that would push me more on economic issues. It was the time to do it, because I had realized how quickly things can change and how important it is to live life to the fullest each day.”

John kept the promise he made to himself and dug deeper into finding solutions for the issues that plague society, and today, he is the President and CEO of CSR Incorporated, a company dedicated to providing professional and technical consulting and research services for the betterment of society. CSR was initially started in 1978 when an engineering company that had been in existence since the 1960’s decided to enter the domain of government contracting. Since that time, the company has been focused on providing consulting services and research to government, private, and nonprofit organizations nationwide, focusing on social services, juvenile and criminal justice, health policy, economics, and education.

What makes CSR unique is not only its breadth of capabilities, but also the certain stamina required to be a leader in its field for over 35 years. For the past two decades, the company has consistently achieved between $8 and $10 million in revenue, but John hopes to see those numbers double within the next five to six years. “The world has shifted in such a way that, if we maintain a steady state, we will essentially become irrelevant,” he explains.

“We are currently classified as a small business, but we have identified some target goals to work toward, and I’m determined to meet them. My hope is that we will define ourselves across fields as a leader who really makes a difference. If people set out to do performance measurement in certain fields, I want our name to come immediately to mind. When we do work with grantees, I want someone to say that we really understood the folks we were working with, as well as the context of those services.”

John was initially brought into CSR in 2008 to manage the company’s Research and Evaluation Division, with little thought in his mind of one day assuming

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leadership of the company. Yet the previous President and CEO, who was a founder of the company and had held her position for 33 years, had been open about the fact that she was looking to retire in the near future, so when she approached him about filling her shoes, he was not entirely surprised. After a brief transition period, he officially took over in December of 2011, and while CSR is employee-owned through an employee stock option plan, John has a large stake in the business and frequently consults with an outside group of advisors around financial and strategic business issues. “I think the President of any company needs to have someone to be accountable to, but also someone to turn to for solid advice,” he says. “One of the things I now understand that I didn’t fully grasp coming into this is that, when you take over something, you need someone you can turn to who will always be honest with you—for your sake as a leader just as much as for the wellbeing of the company.”

While John has always been an entrepreneur at heart, he credits his family’s tremendous work ethic and sense of values for helping him get to where he is today.

His grandfather was born in Barbados in 1880 and traveled to America when he was 12 on a merchant marine ship. “My cousin, who is a history professor, has done the work of chronicling his life, and we’ve found he has a very colorful story,” John says. “He helped build the Panama Canal and created his own carpentry business building houses. For most of his life, he worked for himself, and that’s something I had the opportunity to absorb growing up. I was aware he was his own boss, and I think that rubbed off on me early on.”

John’s father was born in Harlem, and while he was a trained plumber, being an African American in the decades before the passage and full implementation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made it all but impossible for him to find work in his field. Instead, he joined his father in building houses and eventually advanced to work for the New York Transit Authority. “He worked nights, but we still saw him all the time,” John recalls. “The whole family always had dinner together every evening before he went off to work.” When he retired, John’s father was finally able to pursue his creative interests in art and music.

John was born in New York and grew up in the Bronx before moving to Queens when he was in fifth grade. He was the oldest of four boys, and when his father began earning a better living, his mother was able to stay at home with John and his siblings for most of their childhood.

One of John’s brothers was only a year younger than him, so when the boys were old enough, they decided to create their own paper route. “At the time, we lived in the 30

projects, so no one delivered newspapers to our building or the ones around us,” he remembers. “The only way to get your paper was to walk down to the corner store, so every Sunday, my brother and I would use our combined allowance of fifty cents to buy the five cent newspapers.

We’d then go door to door and sell them for ten cents. We would save some of the money we made and use the rest to buy more newspapers, so some weekends; we could make as much as five dollars apiece.” After a while, John’s newspaper business started doing so well that older kids would try to mug them for their earnings, so he hired his neighbor, a boy twice his size, to act as their body guard.

“He was really nice and really big, so we gave him a third of our money to follow us around all morning and protect us,” John laughs.

Even though his early entrepreneurial endeavors had proven successful, John was more motivated by comic book buying power than by the prospect of saving money. But luckily, his mother was very moneysavvy and taught him how to be responsible for himself.

“Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money, but we never went without,” he says. “My parents also had a very strong moral compass which they passed on to us, so I always wanted to feel like I was contributing. I would even offer some of my newspaper money to my mother, but she only ever put it away for me later.”

Throughout his childhood years, his parents encouraged his education, as well as his love for sports. He was an avid baseball player, and while he spent most of his time playing pick-up games or with his neighborhood league, he was always able to keep his grades up.

“My parents always wanted us to have a sense of how to prepare ourselves for whatever might come up in life,” he says. “My mom in particular never said I had to do this or that, but that I needed to have skills so that no matter what else happened, I could fall back on them.”

During his sophomore year of high school, John decided to keep his friends company at basketball tryouts. His uncle had often taken him to the park to shoot hoops as a kid, but until those tryouts, he had never really given the game much thought. “That day, I found I could run the court and jump to pretty impressive heights, but I couldn’t even catch a ball,” he laughs. “I caught it once and tried to go for a layup, and the ball ended up stuck on the backboard.”

Although the Varsity coach had laughed at John, he saw the boy’s potential, so he put him on the JV team, and every day, he would work with him privately at the park near his house. The coach’s premonitions proved correct, and John quickly accelerated to the star of the Varsity team, landing himself a full academic scholar-

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

ship to the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.

“To this day, I can’t understand why he would take that much time to focus on me,” John says. “There’s nothing about me that would make me look like a great player, but he looked beyond the surface and found something in terms of my personality and work ethic that he was willing to invest in. If that hadn’t happened, my life would have been very different.”

John had always had a deep love for history that he inherited from his father, who kept volumes of history books on their shelves at home. Thus, when he started at the University of Bridgeport, he considered majoring in the subject. “I had an idea that I could use history to make a difference in people’s lives. There are lessons from times past that might help people think of how to improve their own situations,” he says. “However, I quickly realized that my vision for what one could do with history was very different from my professors’ visions, and that posed a problem.” John decided to abandon the major for one that had a stronger emphasis on social activism, so he pursued Public Administration and Community Development instead.

Once John had entered the field of community development, he found that his natural desire to educate and improve people’s lives gave him an edge to push the boundaries and try new ideas. For his first job out of undergrad, he ran a youth center in a settlement house serving teenage residents for one of the most difficult housing projects in Connecticut. “These kids were expected to achieve very little in life,” he said. “But I was able to engage a group of them to tell a story about their lives and their community. With the help of the AudioVisual Department of the University of Bridgeport, they got access to portable video equipment and made a very powerful documentary, getting footage from all walks of life in their community.”

Shortly after he graduated, a close friend introduced John to a new program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the International City Management Association (ICMA) that had a partnership with many colleges and universities around the country to recruit minorities into the field of city management. He applied and was accepted into a fellowship to earn his Master’s Degree from the University of Hartford in Public Administration. When he graduated in 1976, he went on to work for the city of Hartford and the Town of Stratford in city management, community development, employment and training, and youth development.

It was during his time working for the Town of Stratford that John, at the age of 27, suffered the massive

car accident, so with his newfound stamina and determination, he applied for his MBA in the hope of learning more about economic development and the economic change process. Equipped with this deeper understanding, he went on to study at the Yale School of Management, and after graduating, he decided to enter the world of corporate America to learn more about the economics he was trying so hard to make a difference in.

Because he had earned the highest grade in his finance class at Yale, John was hotly recruited by Morgan Stanley to work on Wall Street, but he turned them down to work for a manufacturing company instead. “I wanted to see how things were actually made, and how those big decisions are tackled, which was a great experience,” he says. After the manufacturing company, he worked for a telephone company for several years just after AT&T had broken up, when the regional companies were trying to re-operate in an unregulated world.

“They were putting together new business development plans, so I went to work for Southern New England Telephone Company (SNETCO) to help them think through those processes,” he says.

From there, John went on to work as a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, where he focused on making program-related investments. He got involved in their Urban Poverty grant making, where he worked for roughly five years on revitalizing neighborhoods by building their local economies. “The theory was that poor neighborhoods could become less poor by becoming self-sufficient,” he explains. “These neighborhoods should create investment vehicles that allow residents to reinvest their resources back into the community, thereby creating jobs and economic growth. This led to a preference for foundations and public funders who invested in small and minority business development funds that provided financial incentives to create businesses that served local needs and hired local residents as employees. The end result, then, was a virtuous circle that led to positive economic change and, eventually, poverty reduction.”

After five years with Ford, John moved to Chicago to work as Associate Director for the MacArthur Foundation. After several more years, he moved to Minnesota to serve as Vice President of Programs at the Northwest Area Foundation, where he worked with Indian tribes and rural communities.

After several years in Minnesota, his wife, who had been working at the University of Minnesota, had come up with a brilliant research project and was recruited to go to Harvard and then Johns Hopkins, so the couple relocated to D.C. John had begun working at the Urban John Foster-Bey

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Institute headquarters as a Senior Associate, where he directed research efforts and began working more closely with the federal government. There, he met the thenCEO of the Corporation for National and Community Services through a family friend, and they found mutual interest in working together on urban development and poverty problems. “The next day, I got a call from him, offering to hire me,” he laughs. “I was familiar with their program and thought they could really make some difference, so I saw it as an opportunity to go to the next level of making impacts.”

John spent the subsequent five years working as the Senior Advisor to the Director of Research and Policy Development, and while he enjoyed it, he started feeling the itch to return to “trench work.” “Fairly soon into my hunt for new leadership roles, I was introduced to people from CSR,” he explains. “I went to talk with them, and they told me they wanted to hire me to oversee evaluations and research. I saw the potential to build things, and I thought it would be a great transition, so I went.”

Just before starting with CSR, in 2006, John decided he wanted to further his education with a PhD, so he began the pursuit of his Doctorate at Georgetown University’s Liberal Studies Program. “It was a program aimed at professionals who already had some level of accomplishment in their professional careers but might be struggling with some issue—people who wanted an opportunity to reflect with some great minds,” he says. “I’m way over-educated, but I’ve always had this great love of learning. I read a lot and try to teach myself from those readings. Sometimes they are relevant to what I’m doing, and sometimes they just interest me.”

While it was not one specific mentor who led John to where he is today, he credits the help of many people at different points along the way. “If you can find someone who is willing to spend that time and investment on you, it’s a wonderful opportunity, but that can be rare,” he says. “Professional development is often just about being in a place where you can learn from your experiences, as well as from the experiences of others.” He often carried this perspective over to his leadership style, in which he

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first observes his environment and then adapts to make the right decision for the entire team. “I’ve found that leadership isn’t just about having goals and strategies to get to where you want to go,” he says. “You need to be prepared to maybe do things differently if it’s in the best interest of the people you’re leading. Not everyone is motivated by the same thing, so you need to learn how to reach new motivations and how to listen and experiment with your team.”

Today, when John is not at the office, he serves as a board member at Insight Center for Community Economic Development and takes as many opportunities as he can to work with young people in his community, whether it’s volunteering at track meets or being a volunteer coach for swim and basketball teams. His wife, Laura, is equally as invested in community development, while also dedicating her time and energy to issues pertaining to human trafficking. The couple has been married for 24 years, and John has always admired her sharp mind and unparalleled ability to inspire him to take risks. Together, they have three daughters and a son and daughter from a previous marriage. Two of their daughters are still living at home—one a sophomore in high school, and the other is preparing to start college. Their oldest daughter recently graduated with a degree in Biology and hopes to pursue a career in medicine.

“I give my kids the same advice I would give any young person entering the business world today,” he says. “I encourage them to study many different things and to look at what they’ve learned so far as keys that can open more doors. And those doors might be avenues to success for themselves, or for others. Caring enough about what’s going on around you to go the extra mile and make real, meaningful contributions to others is one of our most important duties in life, and something we should all strive for, pitching in little by little to make a better overall picture for everyone.” By applying this philosophy to a life he never takes for granted, John and his team move forward by giving back and achieve big changes through small steps.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Tom Gibson The Shoes of Others “Mr. Gibson,” the overly large fellow, seated behind an overly large desk in an overly large room, addressed Tom. “I am the Dean of Admissions here at Duke University. A colleague of mine was to interview you today, but he has taken ill, so I will be taking his place. I have yet to read your transcript, but if you’ll give me a moment, I’ll review it now.”

Tom watched silently as the Dean’s eyes skimmed the printouts before him, noting his frequent glances of disapproval and unimpressed sighs. After a moment, the Dean put the papers down and said, “Mr. Gibson, your grades are less than impressive, so I have to ask, why exactly are you here?’

To this day, many years later, Tom cannot remember how he responded to the Dean, or what exactly ensued in their conversation. What he does know is that what should have been a perfunctory fifteen minute interview turned into a two-hour-long genuine discussion. At the end of those two hours, the Dean paused, looked across the table to Tom, and said, “Mr. Gibson, as the Dean of Admissions, I’m given a certain latitude to, on rare occasion, admit a student who may not obviously qualify to attend this prestigious institution. I would like to offer you that admission, but with one important caveat. At the end of your senior year here at Duke, you have to come see me again and tell me honestly that you are graduating with the highest of honors.

In addition, you must demonstrate how you’ve contributed to the community of this university and made it a better place to be. Only then will you qualify to enable me to admit the next you. Therefore you must understand that this is not about you—this is about somebody in the future that you can help.”

During the entirety of his time at Duke, Tom therefore walked not only in his own shoes, but also in the shoes of that next student, unknown to Tom, who might find his or herself sitting across from the Dean, wishing someone would take a chance on their future. At the end of his Duke undergraduate career, Tom returned to the Dean’s office, but before he could say a word, the Dean

said, “Mr. Gibson, I already know.” After listing the ways Tom had exceeded his expectations in terms of course selection, performance, and contribution to the community, he said, “Congratulations Mr. Gibson—you have earned the right for me to admit the next you.”

“It was a defining moment,” Tom says now. “It was unusual on his part; I challenged him to admit a student that, under classic criteria, shouldn’t have been admitted, so he challenged me in return to be deeply mindful that my actions would have a profound impact on people I didn’t and may never know.” The Dean’s lesson has stayed with Tom, such that he now makes positively impacting those around him—and challenging others to do the same—the core of his profession.

Tom is the Founder and CEO of Coulter, the centerpiece of which is an association management company that is retained and contracted by boards of directors of nonprofit organizations to serve as their headquarters, staff, and infrastructure. Coulter works with the broadest possible construct of the nonprofit sector, from trade and professional associations to educational, charitable, and philanthropic foundations.

“What we really look for in a client is social purpose and high potential for impact,” he explains. “They have to advance society and their specific community of interest in some evident way that we find valuable, while also having a business trajectory with growth potential that we can help activate. If we believe the organization can become more dominant within its space, and if we believe in its economic and social potential, we will become both a strategic and operational partner with the organization in order to activate that potential.”

Since its inception in December of 1989, Coulter has grown to employ nearly 100 professionals deployed in four distinct business units. Coulter Nonprofit Management unit is the core of the business. The second unit, Coulter Events, brings nonprofit stakeholders together through award shows, conventions, conferences, and trade shows to enhance knowledge exchange, celebrate success, and expand nonprofit economic capacity, while

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the third unit, Coulter Strategy and Innovation, houses Coulter’s public relations, public affairs, and web communications practice areas. It’s also the unit through which consulting services are delivered to an array of large staffed nonprofit organizations to help them refine their growth strategies. In addition, says Tom, “Coulter Strategy and Innovation also works with a number of global corporations, aligning them with best in market nonprofits to help accelerate their corporate objectives.”

The final and most recent addition to the Coulter enterprise is Agency Coulter, which is unique in that it is purely focused on corporate relationships, working with worldwide brands such as American Express and Chanel to conceive, develop, and deliver luxury experiential events. “It’s very different from the other three units, but we were fortunate enough to find a niche in high-end luxury event development,” he says. “That side of the business does well, which enables us to do more good on the nonprofit side. It’s a huge business lesson I’ve learned over the years which I try to pass on to my clients, that it’s a lot easier to do good if you’re doing well as a company.”

Tom credits his father, who started his own business selling small appliances, for influencing his entrepreneurial instincts. Shortly after Tom was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the family moved to Clearwater, Florida, where he and his three siblings grew up close enough to the beach for it to prove a worthy distraction from school and chores, but inland enough to have acres of orange and grapefruit groves, with a backyard pond full of alligators and snapping turtles. His mother helped his father’s business from time to time, but for the most part stayed home with the kids and volunteered heavily within the community.

Tom enjoyed spending most of his childhood days engaged with friends in sports, even though he wasn’t as naturally gifted an athlete as his brothers. Tom relayed the story that when he was eleven, he was on the little league baseball team, where he was far from the star player. In an important game, however, he came to bat in the bottom of the last inning against the best team in the league.

“Coming up to bat, I knew there was a collective groan from all the parents and grandparents in the stands,” Tom said. “We were trailing by two runs, with two men on and down to our final out. The crowd knew the game was about to end as so many had ended, with me striking out.”

Yet Tom was determined not to let his teammates down this time, so when the pitcher threw the ball, he closed his eyes and swung as hard as he could, hoping simply to make contact. Much to his surprise, he felt the ball connect with his bat—an experience so unfamiliar to him that, when he opened his eyes, he wasn’t sure what 34

to do. His teammates shouted at him to run, so he took off towards first base, only to find the other team’s players were walking off the field.

“I realized suddenly that I’d hit a home run,” he smiles. “As I rounded third base, my teammates gathered at the home plate to welcome me, and it was just this grand, great feeling, that I knew I wanted to replicate, since I had never before enjoyed that type of success. I also realized that all the players who were always very nice to me but ambivalent about my place on the team were excited not just for the win, but for me. This notion of team, working with others to achieve a common goal—I only later realized how it all assimilated in the joy of that moment. I understood what it meant not just to succeed, but the importance of sharing in other team members’ successes in pursuit of a common goal.”

After that day, Tom’s love of teamwork naturally brought out an innate empathy for those around him.

He had many friends as a kid, with one in particular that seemed especially grateful to come to his house after school, staying most nights for dinner. Tom wondered why he always came to his house but never invited him over. Finally, one day after school, the boy decided it was time for Tom to come over, so the pair walked to the road adjacent to the school with tattered-looking shacks lining the street. Once inside the boy’s house, Tom was horrified to see that his friend essentially lived by himself, with weeks-old dirty dishes in the sink, little furniture, and rats darting from under the floorboards. “I understand now in my adult life that he was the single child of an alcoholic mother, but at the time, I could barely believe it. I was heartbroken for him,” he says. “I could see that he wanted me to understand what he was dealing with, and our friendship grew strong from my seeing the incredible obstacles he faced.”

His friend’s experiences made Tom even more determined to better define and reach his own potential, while simultaneously helping others do the same. “While at that point I didn’t have the first clue what I wanted to do in my adult life, I realized early that I wanted to do something that enabled others to find success, particularly those facing longer odds,” he remembers.

Like many kids his age, Tom took his first job at age eleven after a little gentle nudging from his father. “My dad pulled me aside and told me that when I turned eighteen, I was on my own financially,” he recalls. “My folks didn’t make me get a job as a kid, but I realized early that if I planned to go to college, I had better start saving up.” Tom took an after-school job working at a mobile home park, where his older brother worked. “The park employed a broad range of laborers, from those in their

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

forties and fifties, to high school kids, or in my case, an eleven-year old,” he laughs. “It was a great life experience, not just in terms of work ethic, but in how to get along with all different types of people.”

While he worked throughout his middle and high school years to save up for college, Tom never felt particularly motivated by academic success, mostly because he was never really pushed by his parents in that regard. “I had two best friends in high school who were very smart, and I told them I thought I might want to be a psychiatrist one day, since I really liked the notion of talking to people and helping them find their potential,” he recalls.

“I remember in eleventh grade, we had just gotten a test back on the circulatory system, for which I, of course, had not cracked a book. My two friends were both dissatisfied with their grades, the first receiving a 98 percent and the second, a 96. When they asked for my grade, I told them the truth—that I had gotten a 7. They looked at me and said in unison that medical school and a career in psychiatry was not likely in my future.”

Despite these minor setbacks, Tom landed his spot at Duke University, having displayed his wit and natural intelligence to the Dean of Admissions, who in turn gave him the much-needed motivation to apply himself to his academics. “Once I realized someone was willing to take a risk on me, and being placed in an environment with very bright people, I wanted to be viewed as a peer and a contributor, and someone who measured up, so it was an immensely powerful motivator,” he recalls.

During an internship in Washington D.C. between his junior and senior years, Tom received another defining moment in discovering his great affinity for politics. “I came to understand the politics of human motivation and behavior, as well as of process and procedure,” he said. “I really ‘got’ the political realm, and I was inspired by how these intelligent people were putting their knowledge and talents to use. At that moment, people were coming to Washington to bring affirmative change and improve lives across the broad spectrum of the population, and I found those sentiments really aligning with my own.”

Tom graduated from Duke in 1980 with high honors in Public Policy Studies and English, moving to Washington for a job with a consulting firm. On his first day of work, the company lost a large contract, which led to significant layoffs, so after only two hours on the job, he was called to the CEO’s office. “I thought for sure he was going to offer me a raise,” Tom laughs. “But the first thing the CEO asked me was my name, so I knew that was a bad sign. Right away, he told me I was fired, and I could hardly believe it. I had just signed a lease for a place on Capitol Hill the day before.”

Tom was disappointed by the sudden turn of events but fortunately found a new and even better position quickly. Even with the brief turbulence in his new city, he fell in love with Washington and had a deep appreciation for people in public service. He lived across the street from a New York Senator, and from his bedroom window, Tom could see the Senator in his kitchen each evening after the Senate has adjourned, always sitting with Members of Congress of the opposing Party while sharing a bottle of Irish Whiskey, finding a way to move legislation.

“That was the beauty of those days in the Senate. They were appropriately focused on getting things done,” he says. “That’s not to suggest they didn’t have some kind of a political agenda, but their higher calling was to represent and serve the people, which is almost always done by finding consensus and compromise. I saw it live and in action almost every night, and I really admired it.”

In 1984, Tom co-founded and served as a senior Association Executive for the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel), a telecommunications industry trade association. As part of the organization’s growth trajectory, they had been exploring the acquisition of some related nonprofits, and Tom had been given permission by the Board to engage in confidential discussions with related organizations. Shortly after, the Board decided that while bringing the organizations under the company’s umbrella would increase revenue, it would dilute their effectiveness on Capitol Hill, so they cancelled the acquisition discussions.

“I had brought all these nonprofit organizations to the table, so they weren’t very happy when I went back and told them the deal was off,” Tom recalls. “They wanted me to make this right for them, which made me realize I had an opportunity to create my own organization where these companies could access and utilize the joint services they needed to process and prosper. Essentially, I replicated the economic advantages of the proposed acquisition while still enabling the organizations to preserve their identity and unique voice in the marketplace. From there it grew to be framework for a broader array of nonprofits to enhance their economic trajectory and realize their potential as an organization.”

With this vision, the Association Management Bureau—later to become Coulter (Tom’s middle name)— was born, and as Tom was formulating the vision, he was convinced it was an original idea. “This was pre-internet, so all I had to go off of was flipping through the yellow pages,” he laughs. “I didn’t find anyone doing what I wanted to do with nonprofits, but as it turned out, there were probably about fifty similar organizations worldwide.

Today, there are probably around 500 operating worldTom Gibson

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wide. Most fall between five and twenty five employees, so Coulter resides in the top 5 percent in terms of size. But more importantly, I believe Coulter is in the top 1 percent in terms of impact.”

While Coulter may not be the only of its kind, it stands out for its unique blend of units, as well as for Tom’s empathy as a leader. “I think that leadership must come from a deeply sincere place, especially in this line of work,” he says. “I find that the ability to put one’s self in someone else’s shoes and view the world through their prism is powerful. It informs my decision making at work in how I deal with colleagues and negotiations, and at home in how I relate to my children and my wife.

I always try to put myself in the shoes of the person with whom I’m speaking and to view the world through that person’s eyes.”

Tom’s wife, Suzanne, has been a particularly powerful influence in shaping his views because of her strength and unwavering sense of self. “She spent her formative years as the daughter of a man who would serve as a Governor and then a Senator, and it’s easy in that type of framework to lose your sense of self, since you’re often defined by people viewing you through that prism,” Tom explains. “But Suzanne possesses a fierce sense of who she really is, and I hugely admire that. She is exceedingly bright and grounded, and has an emotional IQ that is just off the charts. I can hardly believe my good fortune to have her as my life partner and mother to our triplet daughters.”

While Tom serves on an array of Boards and has received numerous honors and awards, including the coveted American Business Ethics Award, his strong preference is to stay in a position of low visibility so he can focus

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on his business and his family. “People know Coulter, but they really don’t know me, and that’s a personal choice I’ve made,” he says. “I jealously guard my privacy and my personal time with my family.”

Tom values his family time now more than ever as his triplets prepare to leave for three different colleges.

“I’m extremely proud of their success so far and their ability to carve distinct paths for themselves,” he says. “I tell them the same thing I would tell any young adult entering the professional world, which is to take the time to find yourself and never let anyone define for you what constitutes success. I want them to discover their personal definition of success and strive toward that while enjoying the journey along the way.”

Tom and Suzanne also encourage their daughters to experience as much as possible so they can understand what resides at the core of what matters most to them.

“I think experiences can be defining because they bring to the surface something that might reside deep within us,” he remarks. “Defining experiences are created by a constellation of moments—that’s the beauty of life. You are born the way you are, and certain things about you are emphasized and brought to the surface over the course of your life. Whether it’s a random home run, a two-hour chat with an admissions director, the good fortune of meeting a life partner who shares your views and values, or the birth of triplet daughters, my life represents a constellation of defining moments and experiences that brought my natural gifts to the surface, which has manifested in a thousand ways, and for which I am very grateful.” Thanks to this constellation, Tom’s legacy is defined by his ability to put himself in the shoes of others, and to work to make the lives of others better because of it.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Fletcher Gill Giving Families Their Wings When Fletcher Gill’s father passed away, the news hit him like a punch in the stomach. For eight years, Fletcher had watched him battle a nervous system disorder. Some periods were harder than others and his father courageously, though precariously, managed to cling to his health. The periods of relative calm had given Fletcher a false sense of security during his constant work travels, so that stopping by to check on his father had not always been his top priority.

“I never got a chance to say goodbye, to reconcile differences, or to tell him that I loved him,” he says today. “I remember making the commute from Tysons Corner, driving past the exit to his house and thinking to myself, ‘I should pull over and see how he is.’”

I knew he was struggling, but I was always too tired from work to go see him. Now, I’d give anything just for five more minutes with him.”

The death of his father left Fletcher with an emptiness he could not fill, catapulting him into a determined search for peace over the next six years. After two job changes, a marriage, and a divorce, he found himself at a standstill, ready to start over but unsure which direction to set out in.

In November of 2007, Fletcher had lunch with his long-time friend, Sarah Wingfield, a Redskins cheerleader-ambassador. She told him about a party she had attended at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center several months before, where she had met Luke Shirley, a soldier who had lost an arm and a leg in an IED blast.

The soldier was clearly struggling both physically and emotionally from trauma he received in battle, but his mother was with him, changing his bandages and doing her best to cheer him up. “Sarah was very moved watching the pair, but also very concerned to see how many of the other soldiers were alone, without the support of their friends and family,” Fletcher explains. “It made us really start to think about what could be done for these heroes, either by the government or by people like us. These soldiers are at a crucial stage of their recovery, and they need the support of their loved ones to find the will to carry

on, so this conversation got the wheels really turning in my head.”

Fletcher immediately realized that a leading cause of a family’s absence at the bedside of a wounded soldier is the high price of airline tickets—a price that, if the family cannot afford it, can bring stress and sorrow to the entire family unit. “I slowly began to realize that I actually had the tools to create the nonprofit we were envisioning to address this problem,” he recalls. “To set up a nonprofit that provided counseling would require licenses and insurance, but no one could stop me from buying someone a plane ticket. I’m a big believer in keeping things simple and doing them well. And I’m a big, big believer in bringing families together—it’s one way I continue to honor my father today.”

Over the following weeks, Fletcher took care of the necessary paperwork to launch the nonprofit, and in January of 2008, he and Sarah threw their first fundraising party. Within their first year, they raised $32,000, which went towards startup costs and supplying nineteen plane tickets. In 2009, they managed to raise $100,000 to cover over 100 tickets, and that success was repeated in 2010. “It took a little while to catch on because a lot of charities in D.C. start up for the wrong reasons and because potential donors can be naturally mistrusting.

Many of them fall apart, so people were skeptical of us at first,” he explains. “But before we knew it, we had gained the trust of a number of military hospitals, so requests for flights started pouring in—all of which we said yes to.”

Unfortunately, however, the fledgling organization’s success garnered requests for flights that far exceeded its incoming donations, stretching the charity’s assets dangerously thin. “I had to take a second mortgage out on my house to start the charity, and there was a point where our American Express balance was $25,000,” Fletcher recalls.

“I began to really get nervous when the credit card company started calling us every day looking for our heads.”

With that, Fletcher reached out to his network in D.C. in search of new ways to raise money. “In November of 2011, Lindsay Kin, the Executive Director of Luke’s

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Wings, and I were invited for an interview on Fox News, which turned out to be a huge success,” he says. “We had families we’d helped on the show, and by the time we left the studio, we’d raised over $60,000.” The interview had opened the floodgates to real exposure that brought in substantial donations, including funding from Warren Buffett and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That year, they increased their revenue to $980,000 to supply 400 plane tickets, and in 2012, they managed to supply 636 flights.

Today, the nonprofit, which they appropriately named Luke’s Wings, has raised over $1 million and supplied over 1,400 flights, serving twelve military hospitals around the country, including those in D.C., Texas, Colorado, and Florida. They have recently expanded their services, including off-book flights to families of special operators and veterans in the Hospice Care Transportation Assistance Program, which flies families to a veteran’s side when they are nearing their end of life. “This allows peace of mind for the veteran and for the family, so that no one has to be alone when they pass away,” Fletcher explains. “It’s a final salute to our greatest generation.” In addition to end-of-life care, the program will also keep the charity busy in times of peace. “When we pulled out of Iraq, people tended to stop donating,” he says. “But this program keeps people engaged, while also being self-sustaining. It has 700,000 members living in elderly care centers, all of whom are eager to donate to help their friends and loved ones.”

Whether experiencing times of high or low donations, Fletcher keeps the charity’s operating costs low to channel as much money as possible toward supplying flights. He has taken a part-time salary for the past four years, employing only two full-time workers and leaning heavily on the passionate volunteers that make Luke’s Wings’ success possible. “We stretch every donation as far as we can, so there really isn’t much left to go around,” he says. “Even if we raised $1 billion, we’d put the vast majority of it towards helping the families, because the number one thing I believe in running this charity is staying accountable to the people I serve.”

Fletcher was born in Northwest D.C., where his family had established a substantial legacy. During World War II, his grandfather had been stationed in San Antonio, Texas with Dwight D. Eisenhower, with whom he became such close friends that the two ended up marrying each other’s sister. After the war, Fletcher’s grandparents divorced, and his grandmother moved to D.C. with her sons, including Fletcher’s father, to join the Eisenhowers.

“I’ve always loved learning about our genealogy,” he says.

“I take great pride in our WWII hospice program at Luke’s Wings since I have a strong family presence in that era.”

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Growing up, Fletcher’s father always looked up to his “Uncle Ike,” so much so that he pursued a life-long career in politics, working first as Eisenhower’s page and eventually for both the Nixon and Reagan administrations. When Fletcher was young, he spent many days at Republican National Committee meetings, sneaking food off the buffet tables while trying to stay out of trouble.

Although his father loved his work in politics, it was not always the most lucrative career, so he tried his hand in political consulting, another avenue by which he could serve the Republican Party. “So much of politics is volunteer-based, and in order to make money, you have to spend a lot of money first to get voted into the club,” Fletcher explains. “It becomes all-consuming, and you start to obsess over it. There is so much drama and so much time poured in, but you get so little done. My father loved it, but I would just get too frustrated with it.”

His mother, who hailed from Missouri, offered support in his father’s consulting business but preferred staying home once the children were born. She often helped Fletcher and his siblings with their homework and was exceptionally nurturing, while his father was much more the disciplinarian. “He always pushed me to do more,” he recalls. “It was never good enough for him, but I was okay with that because it kept me moving forward.” As a result, Fletcher was always involved in some sort of activity, whether it was football, Boy Scouts, or shooting.

Despite what had seemed like a harmonious marriage, his parents separated when he was fairly young.

He attended a boarding school for eighth and ninth grade before switching to a different boarding school for tenth grade, but it turned out to be a bad fit, so after four months, he returned home to finish out the year at the Emerson Institute in the DuPont Circle area of Washington, D.C.. His father had enrolled him at the Institute for its accelerated classes in the hopes of keeping him on track to graduate in four years, but after tenth grade, they decided to send him to a local public school--Wilson High School.

Because D.C. was still riddled with crime in the early 90’s, Wilson High School offered little in terms of educational rigor or support. “I remember being told by the high school guidance counselor that I would never amount to anything,” he recalls. “I wondered what right he had to assume that about me, but I took it as a challenge. I just became more determined to prove how wrong he was.”

His father understood his desire to leave Wilson High School, so he offered Fletcher the option of attending the New Mexico Military Institute. “My dad knew I had a lot of ambition and horse power, so while my grades

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

might not have been the best, he knew I could handle military training,” he recalls. “I think he was really surprised by how excited I was by that idea, so I packed my bags and they sent me off.”

The Institute challenged Fletcher right off the bat. In order to receive rank and eligibility for Annapolis recruitment, he had to repeat his junior year of high school. Additionally, the first few months of training were unimaginably hard, employing the Annapolis strategy of completely breaking the midshipmen down. “They stripped you of your time and energy, and I constantly wondered how I could take another day of it,” he recalls. “I worked through it, though, because I was determined to prove that guidance counselor wrong and earn my rank.

After a few months, I found I actually loved it, because I think I really needed to be challenged in that way.”

Unbeknownst to Fletcher during those initial grueling months, his father had been diagnosed with GuillainBarré Syndrome, a nervous system disorder presumably picked up from a flu shot. His parents refrained from telling him since they understood he was struggling enough, but his hometown girlfriend broke down and called him when his father was particularly sick in the hospital. “Her mother had recently died from cancer, so she thought I deserved to know,” he recalls. “I was very upset by the news, but I decided that no matter what, I would finish that first year at the Institute so I could earn my rank. I knew that was what my father wanted all along, so I did it for him.”

Thanks to his steadfast determination, Fletcher managed to finish the year, which culminated in a dramatic turn of events in which he rescued a college football player from a terrible car accident. “We were just about to leave for the summer, and a bunch of us went off post to find a party to celebrate all our hard work,” he recalls.

“As we were driving through the desert, we saw a truck full of college football players flip several times, and we immediately jumped out to help. Most of the passengers were unharmed, but one football player was stuck under the truck’s cabin, and I was the first person to get to him.

Even though he was twice my size, I somehow managed to pull him out from under the truck. I remember being really amazed afterwards that I hadn’t hesitated to react— it showed me that if I’m really pushed, I can do anything, which was a great thing to learn so early in life.”

When he finally returned home for the summer, Fletcher felt like a new man, having accomplished so much in such a short time. He had loved his time at the Institute, but felt too worried about his father to return, so he transferred to Churchill High School in Maryland, where he graduated a year later.

Fletcher then attended Penn State University, where he joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and immediately noticed the difference between the boys who were partying and the boys who were preparing for their future. “I had a moment where I realized I was the master of my own destiny, and I really didn’t want to screw up college,” he recalls. “I could eat pizza and drink beer every night, or I could really buckle down and make something of my college experience, which would be a huge favor to myself down the road.” He decided to pursue a degree in accounting, planning to go on to become a CPA and earn an MBA in finance; however, after spending every college summer interning with Deloitte, he was offered a job leading into his senior year, which he readily accepted.

As soon as he graduated, Fletcher returned home to Tysons Corner, Virginia, to work for Deloitte as an IT auditor. He spent the majority of the summer of 2001 traveling for his job, so he rarely saw his father, even though he lived just a few highway exits away from him. On September 8th, he returned from a particularly long trip and received the phone call from a neighbor that his father had passed away.

Even though Fletcher and his father had always had a strong relationship, he deeply regretted that they hadn’t spent more time together, especially towards the end of his life. The next several years held further challenges that certainly tried his spirits, but ultimately, Fletcher found himself taking the right fork in the road at a characterdefining moment. “I realized that I could sink into misery and hide in a bottle of alcohol, or I could get up and find new opportunities, so I chose the latter,” he recalls.

He thus decided that 2007 would be the year he started over. He began eating better and exercising more, took up photography, reestablished himself in the D.C. social scene, and took the time to de-stress and explore what really mattered most to him. “By the end of the year, I realized I didn’t want to do IT auditing anymore, so I left my job at Deloitte and earned my real estate license,” he says. “I was washing my hands of everything and taking a new road, so when I had that lunch with Sarah, my mind was clear, open, and ready to take the idea of the charity and run with it.”

In January of 2008, Fletcher began working with a small real estate company in downtown D.C., filed the C3 for Luke’s Wings, and sold his BMW to help fund his dreams. “My savings carried me for 2008 and 2009, since my real estate job was suffering with the downturn in the economy, but all of those sacrifices paid off,” he recalls. Now, five years later, he is engaged to Lindsay Kin and serves as the owner and managing partner of Genau Group Realty, Fletcher Gill

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a small team of five brokers who specialize in commercial real estate.

Fletcher recently had the privilege of returning to the New Mexico Military Institute to deliver a graduation speech, where he encouraged the pursuit of one’s passions while maintaining the safety net of always staying marketable. “No matter what you do, make sure you have a vocational skill so that you can wake up in the morning and know you’re able to make a dollar,” he says. “But with that, I truly believe you should devote your life, or at least a majority of your time, to a cause that moves you. That way it will never seem like work.”

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To remind himself of this very message, Fletcher wears the watch his father gave him as a college graduation present every day. “One of the hardest parts about losing my dad was not having the chance to say goodbye, which is why I feel so strongly about what we do at Luke’s Wings,” he says. “We give people that chance to say goodbye or offer the support to carry them through recovery.

I know that if I sat down with my dad and my Uncle Ike, they would be so proud of the way we are honoring our country’s heroes and bringing families together, and at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Paul Gurman Knocking On Doors Paul Gurman wasn’t an overnight success. As with any high-achiever, his success was borne not only of intelligence, but also of commitment, study, and long hours of work over many years. Just as importantly, it was borne of the confidence to demand consideration and the courage to face rejection.

Indeed, Paul has never been one to settle. After graduating from college, he didn’t take his first job offer, but instead continued knocking on doors until he found a better offer. When embarking on an entrepreneurial career, he didn’t fold in the face of his initial struggles but knocked on doors until the business began to grow and flourish. And when his business nearly collapsed during the real estate crash, he built it back up from the ground by, once again, knocking on doors until his client base grew larger and more diversified than ever before. Although he modestly demurs that he doesn’t know if he considers himself a great salesman, he’s built a career betting on himself and selling others on that bet. From his first foray into the professional world, to his leap into entrepreneurship, Paul has sold potential employers and clients alike on himself, day-to-day and door-to-door.

Paul comes by his professional ambition honestly.

His grandfather, uncle, and father, local entrepreneurs in Terre Haute, Indiana, established their business, which still operates today, back in 1922. Paul credits his influence as key, recalling, “I remember my dad going in, shaking hands, always in a crowd of people. I watched him.

He could talk to anyone.” Of his parents’ three children, Paul was far more interested in his father’s business than his older and younger brother were. While his brothers enrolled in summer camps, Paul stayed at home to help his father and his team recondition steel drums. From a young age, he expected to someday take over the family business, and set to work learning everything he could about daily operations.

Armed with this ambition, Paul became a jack-ofall-trades around the warehouse. “My father and uncle drove a truck around to bring the drums back, and they

had a crew that would clean them out, repaint them, take the dents out, and make sure they were sealed,” Paul remembers. “It was tough work. From the time I was eight years old, I was cleaning the toilets, sweeping out the warehouse, and doing anything that needed to be done.

By the time I was 16, I knew how to do everything.”

Although Paul worked hard for his father, he didn’t bring the same commitment to academics. He didn’t take his classes seriously and often argued with his parents over his poor grades. After spending high school summers apprenticed to his father, Paul headed off to a junior college nearby, fully expecting to receive his degree and return to run the business in a few short years.

After a year at the small junior college, Paul transferred to Indiana University (IU) in Indianapolis in 1968. His plans changed, however, when he was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army in 1969. After two years of service, Paul returned home more anxious than ever to begin running his father’s business, only to be told that he would not be put in charge until he went back to school and finished his degree. Unsure what he wanted to pursue, Paul spoke with his older brother, who encouraged him to consider accounting, as it would help him understand business and would really open doors for him. Paul followed his advice and enrolled in the accounting program at IU, where, for the first time, he found himself fascinated with his studies, compelled to apply himself fully to academics. Once so eager to return home, Paul graduated from IU in December of 1974 and immediately took a position with a CPA firm in Indianapolis.

With a few weeks of vacation before his employment began, Paul took a trip to Washington, D.C., where he began to entertain the wild notion of never returning to Indiana. “I didn’t really know anybody, but I liked the area,” he remembers. “I thought I’d just knock on some doors and see if I could get a job. I made a few calls and got a couple of interviews. Then one guy called me and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to take a chance on you.’” Paul called the firm at home where he already had

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a good offer and told them he had to decline the position. And with that, in 1975, Paul’s professional career began in Washington.

For the next seven years, Paul worked for CPA firms in the District of Columbia and maintained his characteristic commitment to personal and professional growth and challenge. After three years, he left one large international CPA firm to join another, and two years later, he moved on to a large local firm, expecting to stay on and ultimately become a partner there. The firm offered opportunity for growth, but Paul quickly realized he sought a higher career pinnacle. “I had worked as an auditor for large international firms, and I had mastered that skill set,” he reflects. “At the local firm, I worked in their audit department with the understanding that they would teach me the tax side of things, which I knew nothing about. But I realized after about three months that it wasn’t a good fit for me.”

Despite this concern, Paul stayed through two tax seasons, eager to benefit as much as possible from the educational aspect of the position before deciding it was time to strike out on his own. Unmarried and with a mortgage of $1,000 a month, Paul remembers thinking, “If I can’t make $1,000 a month, then I wasn’t meant to be an entrepreneur.” In 1981, he left the stability of his desk job to find out.

Gurman & Company got off to a slow start. Paul didn’t have any useful contacts, and his business was brand new. Bearing in mind the old axiom that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, he began the long slog toward success with a daily perusal of the Washington Post want ads. “I’d get up really early, about six o’clock, and I’d check for people looking for bookkeepers, accountants, auditors, treasurers, consultants—anything I felt I had the experience to do,” he remembers.

Although most of the listings were for part-time and fulltime positions, Paul followed up on every one, explaining to recruiters and potential clients that hiring him for an hourly rate would be more cost effective than adding fulltime staff, who would require benefits and paid leave. Day after day, he pitched himself to anyone in need of financial services, and over time, his clients accumulated. Slowly but surely, business began to grow.

Two years later, Paul’s father called to invite him to come home and run the family business. It was the offer he had dreamed about as a boy, but after the experience of building his own success through skill and tenacity, his horizons had expanded. To his family’s surprise, he declined his father’s offer to take over the long-established business, suggesting his older brother, Bob, as the best candidate instead. Bob accepted the position and moved 42

home to work with their father until he retired at age 90, and today, Bob’s daughter and her husband still run the business in Indiana.

Around the same time, in 1983, Paul married his wife Jean, who was working for McGraw-Hill in sales at the time. “She’s supportive, honest, and a hell of a saleswoman,” he laughs. “She could sell ice to Eskimos!” After getting married, Paul began renting office space, and, fortuitously, found his landlords in need of financial help.

“The guys I was renting from were home builders,” he recounts. “They were just starting out, and their accounting practices were not good. They were using a bigger firm and weren’t happy with the advice they were getting, so after a few months, they began using me instead. At one point, they were about 75 percent of my billing. Things started out slow, and I think year one I billed $10,000, but every year it seemed to double and then triple. And they were a big shot in the arm for that.”

Professionally and personally, everything seemed to be going swimmingly for Paul. But his days of knocking on doors were far from over. In the late 1980s, his homebuilder clients, by then a significant percentage of Gurman & Company’s billing, hit hard times. Overconfident after years of runaway success, they moved into commercial real estate and gambled away the business on failed investments, leaving Gurman and Company in similarly dire straits.

As a result, in 1990, Paul’s income on his Social Security forms was $0. He had five employees but chose not to let any of them go as he struggled to regroup and rebuild the business. He resolved never to take on another client that would make up more than 15 percent of total billings, and has remained true to this commitment of diversification. Steadily, Paul acquired clients, and the business has grown each year since.

This growth was so steady that, in 2000, Paul took on a partner. In 2002, another CPA by the name of John Kelly joined the firm as a partner, and today Gurman & Co. has a staff of around 15. It’s a business he built from nothing, not once, but twice. “I’m not afraid to walk in and ask for something,” he says, reflecting on his intentional and hard-earned success. “Every client that I have is from our ability to sell ourselves—our ability to show it’s a good idea to give us a chance.”

The Gurmans’ salesmanship and unwillingness to take no for an answer have served them well in their personal lives as well. Paul and Jean married in their midthirties and were unable to have children, but they were committed to the idea of building a loving family and instead adopted three wonderful daughters. “We were already approaching age 40 at a time when adoption at

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

40 and above was next to impossible, but we weren’t deterred,” Paul affirms. “My wife wrote to pediatricians all over the country, saying we had the will and resources to adopt. Finally we were put on one list, and then another.

One day we got a call from an agency. Long story short, we were beyond thrilled to adopt our first daughter, a child with special needs.” The baby was born in November and placed with the Gurmans at the end of December. Because of poor prenatal care, she was born with low muscle tone, to the point that a doctor told Paul he didn’t think she would ever walk. Thankfully, she was raised in a family where steadfast tenacity is sacred.

Seventeen months after their first adoption, the Gurmans were blessed with two more children—twin girls who Paul says inspired their older sister to begin pulling herself onto her feet, and ultimately, to walk. “My first daughter is now in her late twenties, and we’re very close,” he says. “She has incredible strength of will. She walks, bowls, and has played basketball, and now she’s living independently, learning to drive and taking classes to become a veterinarian’s assistant.” Today, Paul and Jean work with several charities, none dearer to their hearts than those that assist people who have disabilities as they

watch their own daughter triumph over similar obstacles.

Beyond this philanthropic work, the Gurmans are actively involved with the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center, where Jean has been a board member for eight years. Paul also runs a foundation endowed by a wealthy elderly client who passed away, leaving her $3.5 million fortune to be managed by him. As President, CEO and Chairman of the Board for the charity, which provides funding to programs focused on children and education, Paul and his two other board members consider potential allocation for the money every six months, and are able to support a whole portfolio of worthwhile causes in the process.

To young people preparing to enter the professional world today, Paul condenses his wisdom into a single directive. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions,” he stresses.

“Learn, work hard, and stay out of trouble. It’s the simplest but best recipe for achievement. It’s not glamorous and it’s not easy. It’s slow and steady progress built on slow and steady effort. I started with nothing but a good sense of myself and a good work ethic instilled by my parents, and I built success one day, and one door, at a time.”

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Ann Harkins The Accountability Factor A seventeen-year-old Ann Harkins pulled into the driveway of her home just outside Philadelphia to find a chair blocking her entrance into the family’s tiny wooden garage. Rather than get out of the car and move the chair, she tested her new driving skills by maneuvering around the obstacle, successfully leaving the chair untouched but wedging the car in the fragile garage at such a precarious angle that it quickly became clear there was no way she could get the car out again without causing damage. “I knew I had to go in and tell my father what had happened,” she recalls.

“I expected him to be mad, but instead, he just shrugged and said, ‘You have to bend a few fenders before you learn how to drive.’ That’s when I realized that mistakes could always be fixed as long as you own up to them.”

Her father did, in fact, help her move the car, and she carried that value with her throughout her teen and young adult years. Yet it wasn’t until October 15, 2001, that the full weight of his words would come back to guide her, and the accountability factor would truly lead her to success at a character-defining moment.

It was her first day on the job as Deputy Sergeant at Arms for the U.S. Senate. Mere hours after Ann arrived at work, an anthrax-laced letter was opened in Senator Tom Daschle’s office—the largest bioterrorist attack in American history.

“There was a lot of fear, but I didn’t have time to think about being afraid,” she remembers. “It was so difficult at first. We initially thought the entire building might have to be torn down, and the antibiotic available and in use for other diseases had never been tested on people for anthrax, only animals. And it was hard in terms of community relations as well because we were dealing with a lot of scared people.”

Fortunately, the cleanup team demonstrated incredible resilience and took each new challenge in stride. Toward the end of the ordeal, one of Ann’s major roles was calling each uprooted office to brief them on the return. Three months after the contaminated

envelope was first opened, she was making her phone calls when it was suddenly brought to her attention that hazmat gear had dropped out of the ceiling with some of the other material used in the cleanup. “We thought for sure this was going to be the end,” Ann recalls. “We were convinced we were going to lose our jobs. Regardless, we poured over the blueprints of the buildings into the middle of the night to determine how any contaminants may have traveled. The next morning, we had to tell staff who had been in temporary offices for three months, that they couldn’t use even their temporary spaces. We were expecting the worst, but they turned out to be grateful for our honesty. In the end, they just wanted to know that we really did care about their safety.”

When Ann looks back on the anthrax attack, she shudders over the lives lost and affected. With this remorse, however, she feels pride for the efforts of the inter-agency team, who stepped into action so quickly and never cut corners.

“We knew the world was watching and demanding swift action, but we never sacrificed the integrity of our work,” she says. “If something goes wrong, it’s so much easier to say so and move on to fixing the problem. That’s proved true throughout my career.”

Today, Ann is the President and CEO of the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC), a non-profit dedicated to educating the public on how to protect themselves and their communities through public education, training programs, and civic engagement.

NCPC is most well-known for its unique icon, McGruff the Crime Dog®, who leads NCPC’s “Take A Bite Out Of Crime®” campaign.

The McGruff Campaign, which is now one of the Ad Council’s top five campaigns, launched in 1980 in response to the soaring crime rates of the late 1970s—a time when preventive action was not a developed concept amongst the general population. “If you asked people in focus groups how to prevent crime, they would say, ‘I can’t do anything, that’s the job of law enforce-

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ment,’” Ann explains. “Crime was going up exponentially, and there was a lot of pressure on the federal government to help, so the Justice Department decided to get together with the Ad Council to create a campaign to address the problem and to make the public more proactive about their safety.”

The Ad Council worked with the advertising firm Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, now Saatchi & Saatchi, to develop the image of McGruff, which was first created on a napkin at a Kansas City airport. Shortly after the first commercial featuring McGruff was aired in 1980, the campaign took off, teaching the importance of lights, locks, alarms, and telling a neighbor before going out of town. In 1982, the NCPC was formed specifically to manage the McGruff campaign, which has since spread out from the standard public education techniques of television and radio to workbooks, programs, and crime prevention training. “You can embed crime prevention principles in any facility, such as a school or even a parking lot,” Ann remarks. “There are many different environments. Where there’s a significant crime problem, it probably will not be alleviated unless everyone comes together to communicate. Once we get people together, we can make a crime prevention plan and help them implement it.”

Like any successful business, NCPC has changed McGruff ’s image to keep up with the times, and strategies for crime prevention have evolved as well. On the icon’s 30th birthday, the Circle of Respect program was introduced. It focuses on the basic principle that for a crime to occur, there must be ability, opportunity, and desire. “If you take any one of those legs away, the crime will not occur,” Ann explains. “The Circle of Respect started because we do a lot of work to prevent bullying and cyberbullying. That has allowed us to identify numerous inter-relational crimes, such as bullying, school violence, dating violence, gang violence, and workplace violence. In all these circumstances, an element of respect would change the dynamic between the people involved and reduce the desire to commit the crime.”

Ann was born and raised in the Philadelphia area, where she lived with her father, a postal inspector, and her mother, a stay-at-home mom who worked as a part-time executive assistant. Her parents taught Ann and her two younger brothers the importance of education, and they made every family outing oriented around exposing the children to new and interesting things. Her father was a man of integrity. Her mother was a very intelligent woman who was ahead of her time in terms of women’s rights, passing down to Ann a sense of empowerment and capability. Political dialogue was a constant in their household.

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In junior high, Ann dreamed of one day becoming a doctor, inspired by the family’s pediatrician. At the beginning of high school, however, she became involved in student government, and has ever since been focused on public policy. Driven by this passion, she attended Catholic University in D.C., where she majored in Latin American history, having been inspired by a foreign exchange experience she had in Paraguay. “I was living with another family, and it was eye opening,” she comments. “I tapped into a willingness to try new things and experience new cultures.”

After graduating, she attained her Master’s in Latin American history, thinking she might pursue a Ph.D. in the subject down the road. Her mind was changed, however, when she went to New York City to work in international education. “I was with a group of really smart career women,” she notes. “They were all starting to apply to law schools and business programs, and I knew I wanted to get back to D.C. and the government, so I decided to pursue law instead.” After three years in New York, she moved back to D.C. where she attended the night program at Georgetown University Law Center while working part-time.

Working on Capitol Hill had always been enticing to Ann, but she had found no means to get there in her time right out of college. So when a law professor announced he knew of a job opening on the Hill as a law clerk, she jumped on the opportunity. “The whole class booed because the job included typing,” she laughs.

“But I went and checked it out. I ended up landing the job and working for Senator Leahy, who was at the time a junior member of the Judiciary Committee.” Now he is the Chairman of the Committee and President Pro Tempore of the Senate. “From him and his then Chief Counsel John Podesta, I learned that good substance is good politics,” Ann remarks.

Ann worked for Senator Leahy until she graduated from law school in 1982, at which point she went to work as a litigation associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell.

“Dan Kolb, the partner for whom I worked, approached the work with the mindset that, rather than being defensive as defense counsel, we were telling our story,” she says. “I found that so positive—that you might be in a jam, but it doesn’t mean you did something wrong.

You just need to explain what you did and why. I’ve used that lesson in my career every day for almost 30 years now.”

In 1986, Ann was invited back to work on Senator Leahy’s staff, so she returned to the Hill to serve as General Counsel to the Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks Subcommittee. A year later, Leahy became the

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, leading to Ann’s promotion as his Chief Counsel on the Judiciary Committee, where she stayed for eight years. Then, after a brief stint in the private sector, in 1995, she transferred to the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, where she became what she terms an all-purpose troubleshooter. “Before a policy position becomes public, the Department has to be certain all of the interested stakeholders are part of the decision making process,” she explains. “Often, the Office of Legislative Affairs is the last stop before a policy statement goes to the Hill, and it has to be solid. I did a lot of oversight in that regard.” Her work there led to her becoming Attorney General Janet Reno’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and eventually Chief of Staff, where she served until 2001.

During the summer of 2001, Ann began looking into the job as Deputy Sergeant at Arms in the Senate, a role she knew would combine her experience as a Senate staffer with the management experience she gained at the Justice Department. On September 4th, 2001, her soon-to-be boss, Al Lenhardt, who now serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania, was hired as Sergeant at Arms, specifically in response to Senator Daschle’s request to hire more security professionals. General Lenhardt served in Europe in the early 1980s, and later became head of the Army’s military police.

Her experience played in Ann’s favor during the hiring process. “By then, I had spent five and a half years in the Justice Department, so I was a Senate professional with a civil liberties background,” Ann says. “I could talk with law enforcement easily, which I think helped my application.” Staying focused despite the turmoil in the country, Ann followed through with her application in mid-September 2001 and started in her new position on October 15th, the same day the anthrax letter was opened.

Ann was en route to being sworn into her new position, first as Deputy Sergeant at Arms and then at the Capitol Police. She went to her first swearing-in, waiting to hear if the spores in the envelope tested positive for anthrax. They did, prompting Ann to fly into duty and putting off her second swearing-in for months.

Cleanup began immediately and lasted until January 2002—a notably fast effort, considering the number of offices that had been affected. Ann recalls how supportive the Senate was throughout their efforts. “No one tried to rush us,” she says. “Senator Daschle kept reminding us to follow the science and do it right.” The Senate leadership supported Daschle’s commitment to health and safety as the top priority. That kind of support in a crisis is invaluable.

The bioterrorist attacks left a heavy cloud of fear and unease over the Hill, but Ann and the inter-agency team was hugely successful in the cleanup effort. Lenhardt, especially, had become an influential figure in her life, having been a strong leader in the face of a national crisis.

Ann later moved home to West Virginia in 2003, working for Senator Rockefeller. She went on to serve as Executive Director of the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program for the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, and she also coordinated two West Virginia Summits on Homeland Security. In 2004, Lenhardt became President of the NCPC, and in 2006, he invited Ann to join him at NCPC to serve as Vice President for Programs. After a year and a half in that capacity, she was promoted to Chief Operating Officer before being promoted to CEO in 2009.

Today, Ann monitors the threats of yesterday while also shifting her attention to the threats of tomorrow. Chief among the latter is the internet—a terrific tool that can also provide new techniques for villains at the forefront of crime. “Crime rates are currently the lowest they’ve been in 30 years, but that’s in comparison to the types of crimes seen in the 1950s,” she says. “It used to be relatively easy to identity thieves. If you want to find out how many cars or bikes are stolen, you can access that statistic, but with cybercrimes, it’s harder.

It’s much easier for criminals to hide, and they can do immeasurable damage, including identity theft and financial fraud.”

As the current president of the NCPC, Ann recognizes the importance of listening in leadership. “I always make sure to make every voice heard, especially the young ones,” she says. “There’s nothing I’m prouder of than the young people I’ve worked with who have gone on to be forces in their own right. I love helping these young people get started because I know so many people helped me along the way.”

As Ann enjoys helping others get their footing in the work world, she feels strongly about volunteering at various non-profit organizations, such as her local arts council, as well as the Contemporary American Theater Festival, both in West Virginia. She also always makes time for her dedicated group of friends. “I’m blessed to have friends that I’ve been close to for over 40 years,” she smiles. “I don’t think that’s very common in Washington, but people are very important to me, and I don’t want to lose them. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when people come together and communicate.”

Throughout her many roles, Ann has balanced her career at the intersection of law, policy, and poliAnn Harkins

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tics. She attributes the success she has had in each of her various roles to her father’s lesson so many years ago, which she has held with her each day. “In my line of business, I’ve found it’s all about putting your best foot forward, making decisions on the merits, and thinking through a problem, rather than defending yourself,” she

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says. She hopes to send the same message to the next generation entering the workforce, allowing them to live life more in a state of wonder than a state of worry.

“You have to be open to things in life,” she says. “Make mistakes and take responsibility for them—it’s the best, surest way to end up where you need to be.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Rob Henninger Bringing the Market Home One of Rob Henninger’s earliest memories is the cross-country trip he took with his father, uncle, and older brother in the family’s 1948 Dodge. Rob was barely four years old at the time, and his father, a Naval officer and recent graduate of Stanford Business School, was headed to work at the Pentagon. Rob had been born at a submarine base in Connecticut in 1947, and shortly after that his father had moved their family to Palo Alto, California, where the Navy sent him for his MBA. Now the family was migrating again to Northern Virginia. But this time, though he didn’t know it yet, Rob was home to stay.

“When we first arrived here,” Rob says today, “Fairfax County was very rural with lots of farmland and some small towns. But that was all rapidly changing. Growing up in the 1950’s and ‘60s, I saw constant development and growth. The landscape was transforming radically. I even remember when the Beltway was first being built. My wife grew up not far from there, and she used to ride her bike on it before it was open.”

Steeped in the energy and frenetic pace of this booming community, Rob was not one to fall through the cracks. Instead, he embraced opportunities to be a part of that growth. As the county built new schools to handle the increasing population, Rob volunteered to work with a team of other students to decide on the official colors and mascots for the fledgling institutions, and to draft constitutions for student governments. He drove a paper route in one of the most rural areas in the county and also worked as a housepainter in the summers. When he went to college, he stayed in Virginia, attending the College of William and Mary.

It is no surprise to learn that today, Rob Henninger, 66 years old and founder and CEO of Henninger Media Services in 1983, is still here in Northern Virginia, and that his company is headquartered in nearby Arlington.

For a company that provides editing and finishing services for television and other broadcast media, it would have made sense to work in Los Angeles or New York City. But Rob was determined to start his company here.

“It would have been logical to go to one of those cit-

ies,” he acknowledges. “Maybe it was stubbornness, but I loved it here in Fairfax County and Arlington. I was going to do everything in my power to develop our field of postproduction in this market.” In essence, Rob felt a fierce loyalty to his city. It would have been easy to give up on it and move where the market was, but Rob was resolute: instead, he would bring the market home.

At least some part of Rob’s deep commitment to the area goes back to his childhood. Before he was eight years old, he had an experience that would change him forever.

“We had a ritual in our house where, once a week, my father would let my brother and me share a soft drink,” Rob remembers. “Our parents didn’t like us drinking too much soda, so we could only have it once a week, on Saturday. Dad opened the bottle, and one of us would pour it into two glasses, while the other got to choose which glass they wanted. We loved soda; it was a big deal to us.”

One day, Rob and a few of his friends were playing outside, when the other boys revealed that they had smuggled out a bottle of Pepsi, which they then shared. Not long afterward, two of the boys were diagnosed with polio.

Rob’s mother kept a close eye on him, and as soon as he exhibited symptoms, he was taken to the long-time family pediatrician, Dr. Katherine Knop, at the Yater Clinic in D.C. “I’m really lucky she was our doctor,” Rob says. “I was just six years old and Dr. Knop felt hospitalization could actually make things worse, so she had our family quarantined and our house set up for my care. My parents monitored me constantly and Dr. Knop would come by the house every evening to check on me.”

The months in bed were followed by months and years of physical therapy. While the disease crippled some of Rob’s friends, thanks to his mother’s close eye and Dr. Knop’s care, the nerve damage and muscle loss he experienced was restored with intense therapy. A more permanent effect of the disease’s course was to make Rob more aware of those inner voices that can keep one on track: his intuition and his conscience. “It had a big effect on me,” he avows today.

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Even after such a trying experience, Rob was driven to leadership positions in high school, and to try his hand at new things like acting. “We were at George Marshall High School when it opened and the drama teacher, John Reese, was a first year teacher. He directed our plays with very high standards and was a real inspiration. I got totally involved and began to set my sights on acting and the theatre as a career.”

By junior year in high school, Rob was himself directing plays, which is when another student, Renee Guenard, came to play a special role. “We actually met in the eighth grade at Longfellow Middle School, and although we had a lot of the same classes and she acted in some plays, we weren’t particularly close,” Rob recalls. “Mr. Reese had asked me to direct a one act play for a regional competition where the other school’s plays were being directed by teachers. Renee wasn’t in the cast but she signed up to be stage manager. In rehearsal we had some huge setbacks, but Renee was totally supportive and got us past every obstacle. Our play won first place at the festival, but more importantly, I realized this amazingly strong, smart, and creative person was who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I guess she felt the same, and we’ve been together ever since.”

Rob and Renee were married in 1966 while they were in college at William and Mary. He continued studying theatre, playing a number of leading roles in plays like Hamlet and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, all the while holding part time jobs and starting a family. “By the time we both graduated we had two children. We often look back at those times and ask ourselves, How did we do that?“ Rob says with a laugh.

Right out of college, he got a job at the Washington Theatre Club and was actually on track to become a stage actor. But at the end of the first season, a friend who did lighting in film and television got him a job that changed his life. “I had never thought about television or film,” Rob said. “I was a purist. I was going to have a career in acting and go into playwriting. But then I got this one-time freelance job, and everything changed.”

For starters, the production was prepared to pay Rob $150 a day as an electrician, when he had been working in the theatre for $80 a week as an actor. To Rob and his small family, the difference was considerable. Then, as he began learning more and more about film production, he became hooked. When this first project ended, he found himself in the middle of the early 1970s recession and unable to find immediate work, but he would not be deterred.

“I developed a strategy,” Rob explains, “of volunteering to clean up and fix local film productions’ light50

ing equipment. They had these equipment rooms, and I’d get them organized. I volunteered to do it in return for learning and practicing with the cameras, but an unintended byproduct of the arrangement was that the producers got to know me. They saw I was someone they could count on, and that I knew my way around the equipment. So when they needed someone for a project, they gave me a call. This was a breakthrough moment for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning how to network. I was learning how to establish relationships and to create opportunities.”

This led to a venturesome period of travel and advancement. Freelancing in various technical roles for production companies took Rob to Guam, Saudi Arabia, and Europe. He learned various technical aspects of crewing a production, and he became involved in documentary filmmaking in the Washington, D.C. area—home.

“Washington is very strong in documentary filmmaking,” Rob affirms today. “This goes back to the 1930’s and the WPA, I think, and the fact that this area has such rich history and great resources like the Smithsonian and the National Archives.”

With his school experience in playwriting, Rob started writing for documentaries. He would soon learn, however, that what he really wanted to do was edit those films. He wanted to apply his training in structure, flow, and development to stitching a documentary together.

Although he had no direct experience with editing, he again employed his strategy of building trust and creating opportunities for himself. Sure enough, while working on a film with footage from Saudi Arabia, the editor became ill. The producer knew that Rob was eager and capable, so with that, his editing career began.

“I just sat down and dug into it,” Rob says. “And it was one of those moments in life when time just stops.

You’re working for hours and hours, yet your whole focus is rapt. You start at nine in the morning, and suddenly it’s three the next morning. I was totally absorbed in what I was doing, and though I had a lot to figure out technically, my affinity for the experience was natural and complete.”

Editing was a great fit for Rob, and he came into it at a time of rapid technological advancement. In the mid1970s, large postproduction facilities began to open as a necessity for housing the electronics and staff that projects of such magnitudes called for. “I began traveling to markets outside of the Washington area,” Rob explains.

“I would go to nice facilities, and as the facility business grew, I witnessed the emergence of new technology. I developed a confidence that the art and science of the industry was all being figured out in real time, and that there was no set way of doing things. I saw that the process was

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

being invented as we all went along because the technology was, and still is, changing every year. I became confident that I had a clear shot of figuring it out and keeping up with it.”

And so, in 1983, Rob Henninger founded Henninger Media Services in his hometown of Arlington, Virginia. His father, a very business-savvy individual, helped him write the business plan. “Since then,” Rob says, “he’s been on the board of advisors. I wish I had his knowledge and skill in the area of business. He’s been a terrific advisor, as has my mother, who was a professional bookkeeper.”

Early on, Henninger identified and reinforced its core business values: quality, service, innovation, and teamwork. The company became a vanguard for the technological advances in video editing beginning in the early 1980s and extending through several generations of innovation through the into the 21st century. Two of Henninger’s largest clients, National Geographic and Discovery Channel, came into being and grew along with Henninger in the D.C. Metropolitan area.

Through this growth, Rob readily points out that technological innovation has sometimes meant volatility.

“The hardest experience came between 2000 and 2003,” he recalls. “We had a lot of talent and people whom I really valued. But because of shifts in the business, with networks developing their own in-house facilities and things like that, we had to downsize significantly and had some very tough choices to make.”

In advising young entrepreneurs entering the workforce today, Rob expands upon several management and leadership lessons he’s picked up over the years. “I really had to learn not to micromanage,” he says. “I had to learn to work smart. We were working so many hours at the beginning that it was ultimately unsustainable, but we had established this standard of working that hard. And I tried to control workflow so strictly that it created a backlog. I really had to learn to hire people I could trust. The biggest test for me, as well, has been setting the course—establishing the direction we’re going to go, and then setting the expectation and allowing my people to figure it out and take responsibility on their own to execute the plan.”

Beyond this, Rob emphasizes the paramount importance of defining what it is that’s most important to you, and truly standing by it at all times. “I’m most proud of my wife, my seven children, and my six grandchildren,” he smiles. “And I’m also proud that I’ve been able to stay local to the area I love. I’m very proud to have contributed to the growth of our industry in this market—to have been part of its creation, rather than just its continuation.

The vision at the time grew out of my desire to spend more time with my family, but since then we’ve helped grow a market that competes with the best work in New York and Los Angeles. And I will always be proud of that.”

Indeed, because Rob refused to give up on his city and believed in his ability to define a market through his life’s work, the D.C. metropolitan area will never be the same.

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Alan Horowitz Point A to Point B If there’s one thing that has consistently defined Al Horowitz’s character throughout his life, it’s his remarkable ability to stay focused. From the very outset, his gaze has been steady, and his footsteps have been straight. “I’ve always had something inside of me—a work ethic I think I got from my father—and it’s driven me to be focused and hardworking,” he says. “I’ve always loved the challenges of business, and of growing and building things, whether it’s a startup, an existing business that needs a fresh look, or a new business within a business.” Now the President of Mainstream GS, a management consulting company focused on increasing performance and sustaining success for their clients, Al has put his knack for steering steady from Point A to Point B to work for countless companies, helping them navigate to success just as he has through the years.

Mainstream Global Solutions, or Mainstream GS, was launched in 2003 as part of a holdings company called Mainstream Holdings. Founded by Joe Patten, a turnaround management specialist by trade, MainStream Holdings originally included MainStream Management, a corporate turnaround and restructuring firm launched in 1999; MainStream Consulting, a process improvement management consulting company; and MainStream Dispositions, a disposition, liquidation, and wind-down firm, were both established in 2000. It worked primarily with midmarket commercial companies and started to get some government work, so they spun off and formed Mainstream GS. Today, Mainstream GS sets itself apart by going the extra mile. “There are a thousand companies out there who are great at increasing performance, but one of the biggest problems is how to sustain that increased performance,” Al points out. “Our secret sauce is working with organizations to go that step beyond what they find other places. Focusing on sustained high performance, we address the technical tools and cultural change management. We’ve found that doing a transformation isn’t about just learning a new technique; it’s about changing the way we look at things and the way

we work. It’s that fusion that’s at the heart of what our company does.”

They first put their skills to the test when the Air Force approached them for assistance with improving turnaround time for aircraft that came to their air logistics centers to be serviced. Recognizing that they were burdened by thousands of inefficient processes and procedures, Mainstream GS helped the Air Force streamline and then change some of their management approaches, making the overall procedure faster and more efficient than ever.

This strategy worked well for Mainstream GS, and business grew, but as MainStream GS helped organizations improve their processes, they found themselves wondering about the philosophy that lay underneath those processes. What was the real strategy of the organization? In environments where laundry lists are long and time is short, what are the three most important things organizations can do to keep themselves on the right track? Mainstream GS began doing more strategy deployment work for their clients. “In the military, there’s something called Commanders intent,” Al explains.

“It’s those top priorities he or she most needs to get done for their Command’s success. A Navy Command, for instance, had 150 improvement projects going on at once, when only four of those were on the Admiral’s scorecard.

All that extra activity was driving inefficiency, so we had them retire many of their projects and focus resources on those four things that were most important to the organization.”

Al and his team then worked with Air Force leadership to maintain that focus, ultimately leading Mainstream GS out of the wheel-and-break shop and into the realm of Command-wide strategic planning. Integral to this strategic plan was an exit strategy for Mainstream GS. “Most consulting companies want to come in and become part of the furniture of an organization, so having a sunset plan that phases us out of the equation really sets us apart,” he points out. “Essentially, we’re problem solvers. If you have a problem, we’re going to solve it, not per-

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petuate it to keep ourselves around. We’re about results and progress, hands down.”

Getting from Point A to Point B and driving results has always been a hallmark of Al’s approach, even from the earliest days of his childhood. He was born in 1958, the youngest of four children in a middle class family living in Washington, D.C. His mother had worked for several years while also being a homemaker, and along the way she went back to school part time and earned a Master’s degree. His father, a hardworking government employee with a PhD in chemistry, was the model of drive and commitment—though he still found time to take his young son to Washington Senators baseball games. “They were horrible, but I loved the experience,” Al recalls. “I even had a baseball signed by all the players until my dog ate it.”

Al learned more about responsibility and the rush of getting rewarded for hard work when he got his first job as a paperboy. He loved the experience so much that he ran his route for five years, through junior high and high school, eventually earning enough money to buy his first car and learning about the importance of customer service in running a small enterprise. “That was one piece I kept with me,” he remembers. “Another was the experience of playing a lot of sports growing up, as competition and teamwork were things I really enjoyed.”

Al played primarily boy’s club youth and participated in the Beltway League, building his skills in baseball, basketball, and football. Montgomery County suffered from residual segregation at the time, with only one or two black students in Al’s class, but a black football coach at the Wheaton Boy’s Club, Ed Guy, held the promise of a more integrated tomorrow. “The young kids on the team didn’t see him as black or white,” Al remembers. “He was a great coach and influence, and my first real exposure to diversity.”

Later, the public high school in Al’s neighborhood was testing out a new learning philosophy and wasn’t as oriented around athletics. Though he did join the golf team, which went on to win the Montgomery County championship, his participation in sports dwindled.

Still, their impact on his life remained noteworthy.

“They served to show me that winning might not be everything, but effort is,” he remarks. “And they’re a testament to self-motivation. My parents weren’t into sports—they just provided me with the tools to do what I wanted to do and accomplish success, in much the same way that Mainstream GS provides a toolbox for success to its clients today.”

More than anything else, Al’s childhood was guided by values that encouraged him to stay grounded while 54

striving to be the best he could be. His childhood and neighborhood friends didn’t care much for material possessions, focusing more on playing hard and having fun.

“We had beat up bicycles and beat up shoes,” he laughs.

“We were never materialistic. We didn’t know what wealth was, so we didn’t think about it.”

The late sixties and early seventies were a time of tremendous upheaval for American culture, and the older Horowitz children got involved in the counterculture movement. Al, however, steered a steady course amidst the tumult, not missing a beat as he went through high school, work, college, and his MBA program. “I never felt the need to have that ‘go out and find yourself ’ experience,” he explains. “I’ve been running since eighth grade.

It’s just that side of me that’s driven to stay focused, and though all of my siblings are now established and successful, the decision making responsibility in our family still tends to fall in my court.”

As a child, Al had always wanted to become a lawyer, but once he started college at the University of Maryland, his interest in business grew with every marketing class he took. He also used college as a platform to cultivate his people, public speaking, and leadership skills, getting involved in plays and even doing some standup comedy. “I had a lot of fun,” he laughs. “It was something completely different, and not something I had planned on doing. It was a great experience because of the unknown—getting up in front of people and seeing if they were interested or if they’d throw you out!”

Upon finishing his bachelor’s degree, he immediately enrolled in an MBA program at Loyola in New Orleans—the only time he ever lived outside of D.C. “I had never seen Southern hospitality before,” he marvels.

“It was a great experience culturally—one that I still carry with me. And that experience of going to a small school, where students could have so much interaction with teachers, really added a new dimension to my character.”

One thing his MBA program did not teach him about, though, was sales. “I think sales is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in the world,” he avows.

“Whether you’re an accountant, an author, or a used car salesman, it’s one of the most important skills anyone can have—and one of the hardest things to do. It’s something I continue to try to get better at all the time.” Al got his sales education through various telemarketing jobs, including photography services, aluminum siding, and magazine subscriptions. “I enjoyed the challenge of sitting there with a list of 600 names you had to just tackle,” he remembers. “It was raw sales, and I loved it!”

Shortly after completing his MBA, Al returned to D.C. in May of 1983 and was hired as a junior research

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

analyst for a Navy contractor. It was several months later that he made one of the best decisions of his life—to go out to a bar in Georgetown called Champions with his basketball league buddies. There, he spotted one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He knew he had to meet her. Noticing he had a golf ball in his pocket, he marched up and dropped it in her drink, and fortunately, she had a sense of humor.

The two married a few years later, in 1986. “I still can’t believe that that kid from Montgomery County met a beautiful girl from Arkansas, so bright and articulate and with a Master’s in public education,” he describes.

“What are the odds of that? I did not set out to meet my wife that night. It was the luckiest night of my life. She has such great insight and intuition that have helped so much throughout my life and my business career. We now have three incredible children and couldn’t be happier.”

After working his way up to a research analyst position, Al decided he wanted to get into sales and marketing, so he accepted a position with Future Enterprises, a computer training company. As the marketing manager, he developed their marketing capacity capability and sales for five years, having the time of his life as the company enjoyed rapid growth. He ran and ran until he realized that it was time to run to the next thing—McClendon Automation, another consulting company. That company, however, didn’t turn out to be the right fit for him, so he leveraged his contacts at Microsoft. Microsoft actually created a new position for him as a DoD Program Manager, running marketing and managing government contracts with systems integrators for their federal office.

“Microsoft primarily only had Word and Excel back then, doing about $40 million of business for the entire government,” Al remembers. “After several years, I approached the guy who ran the office and said we needed to get into consulting and product support for the government.” At that time, Microsoft Consulting Services existed in the commercial world, but not in the government.

The company finally said he could try it for six months if he put together a business plan, but if it didn’t work, they’d shut it down.

Al started with nothing more than a few people, but the business took off. Their first purchase order was for $10,000, and they expanded from federal to state and local government all around the country, quickly becoming one of the largest consulting and product support business within Microsoft, and one of the most profitable.

Again, Al found himself having the time of his life.

In 2005, Microsoft wanted to take their practice around the world, so they named Alan WorldWide Public Sector General Manager for Services. He trav

eled from country to country, helping the local practices launch or grow and linking people together with best practice sharing. “I had never really understood other cultures or traveled much internationally, so it was a fantastic experience for me,” he says. “But as time passed, I realized my kids were growing up, and I wanted to be home more.” By the time Al transitioned out of that role, the WorldWide Public Sector Services was doing over $700 million in annual revenues.

After finishing up his duties as Program Manager, Al assumed the position of Federal Marketing Manager.

Then, ready for his next move, he interviewed for a U.S.wide marketing job with Microsoft but didn’t get it. “I was really disappointed about that, but I never thought of it as a failure,” he remarks. “I didn’t have a lot of pressure on me growing up as a kid that taught me to fear failure, so it wasn’t a big concern of mine. And in fact, it turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened. I took that opportunity to approach Microsoft about starting a consulting business working with the U.S government.

Ultimately, after 17 wonderfully exciting years, I retired from Microsoft and began searching for a different direction with a chance to learn new things.”

About six months prior to retiring, Al had met Joe Patten, Chairman of MainStream Holdings. The more he learned about Mainstream GS, the more he began to realize it was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Al came on board in 2008 and realized that the company needed to broaden its scope. “We began to evolve from a singularly-focused lean consulting company to a more full-service management consultant company. We even re-defined our name,” he explains. “No one even knew what the GS in Mainstream GS stood for, so we went through a discovery process of our own and came up with Global Solutions.”

This meant, first of all, adding a sales and marketing focus to Mainstream GS’s approach. It meant creating a pipeline and addressing the fact the company lacked a diversified portfolio. The challenge was considerable, and one that Al took six months to consider accepting, culminating in one final dinner meeting in which Sandy met Joe and let Al know her thoughts. “It was a risky move to go work for a small company after working for a giant one, having a lot at my disposal and running a huge organization,” Al recalls. “But I wanted to take on the challenge, and I had done similar things before. If Mainstream GS was at Point A, and I could envision a great Point B, I wanted to take it there.” With that, Alan was brought on as Senior VP of Public Sector Programs.

After a year and a half, the President retired. Mainstream Consulting was stood down, and Alan became Alan Horowitz

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President of Mainstream GS—a challenge he was well prepared for. “At Microsoft, people would ask what the best prerequisite was to work there,” he recalls. “I would tell them that the best thing you can be is well-rested, because you’re running a marathon 24 hours a day, every day that you’re there. I was conditioned for hard work coming out of that experience, and it has served me well here.”

Under Alan’s leadership, Mainstream GS continues to evolve today as they diversify their customer base beyond the military and into the healthcare sector.

“One of the challenges of a small company is that you can’t do everything, so we’re trying to be intentional in a few markets, and then everything else we do is opportunistic,” Al explains. “If something new comes our way and looks promising, we’re going to do it.” The company has diversified its portfolio, setting it up for more sustainable growth in the future when budgetary concerns in Washington stabilize.

This proactive mindset paves the road that stretches out before Al the secret stabilizer that has always allowed

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him to get from Point A to Point B so smoothly. That’s why, in advising young people entering the working world today, he encourages them to focus on success at every step. “I think there’s this burning desire to get the best job or do the best thing right away, but it’s not about where you start; it’s where you end up,” he points out. “If you come in as a junior research analyst like I did, be the best junior research analyst you can be. Build a great track record during the time you’re there, and even if it’s not your dream job, that’s okay. You’re running a really long race, so pace yourself to ensure future success.”

Integral to this preparatory approach to life, as well, is lifelong learning. Whether he’s listening to business books on tape while exercising in the morning, investing in his children’s education, or simply being a good listener, Al’s effectiveness is built upon a belief in the process of learning new ideas, incorporating them into one’s life, and being better each day because of it. “Be brief, be bright, be gone,” he says, echoing an integral saying he’s picked up over the years. “That’s what getting from Point A to Point B is all about.”

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Terry Hsiao A Series of Accidents Terry Hsiao rarely, if ever, splurged. His parents had always taught him the importance of frugality, and it wasn’t until receiving exit money from the sale of his first company that he ever considered doing something spontaneous with his money. Instead of buying a Porsche like so many of his former colleagues, however, Terry decided to do something completely out of the norm. He decided to buy a hand-signed, limited edition Steinway grand piano—one of only 91 pianos specially made to commemorate Henry Z. Steinway’s 91st birthday, who was the last of the Steinway family to make pianos.

Terry happened to purchase it on his own birthday, making it all the more meaningful. “I wanted something I could pass onto my kids, and something they could pass on to theirs,” he says.

So far, the piano has proven more than just an heirloom. By the age of ten, Terry’s son, Ethan, became somewhat of a prodigy, invited to perform both at Carnegie Hall in New York City and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to share his gift with the world. It wasn’t the first time Terry’s spontaneity had proven perfectly on target, and it wouldn’t be the last. Now the co-founder, President, and CEO of Hook Mobile, a startup offering a cutting edge user acquisition channel designed for mobile devices, he has lived his life by taking things as they come and making the most of every opportunity. “I think life is a series of accidents,” he says. “Somehow I ended up here, and I continue to enjoy every step of the way.”

Terry grew up in Taiwan, where children are raised with a heavy emphasis on education. “As a kid, your job is to study,” he remarks. “Despite the cultural pressure, I always put a premium on well-roundedness and diversity.

I never wanted to be single-minded, even if that meant I could never be the best at something. I put my emphasis on getting exposed to more things as opposed to spending too much time on any one thing.”

His father was an engineer by training who worked for General Electric, and his mother was a teacher. At the time, it was common for young people to remain in Taiwan for college but to travel to the U.S. for graduate

school, but his mother and father began considering the possibility of getting Terry overseas earlier. He had an uncle living in New Jersey, so the Hsiaos came to visit the summer before Terry was to begin high school. When his parents presented him with the option of remaining in the U.S. to attend high school, he decided to stay. “It was a simple decision for me because I was curious to see what it would be like to live a different life,” he says. “I knew what life in Taiwan was like, but the U.S. experience would be completely new, and I wanted to try.”

Terry was 15 when he moved to the U.S., but it took several years to hit his stride and adjust to life as a teenager. After receiving an honors degree for electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University, he entered the working world and happened to land a job at Cellular One, effectively launching him into the brand new industry of mobile cellular phones. “That was the first accident, and it turned out to be a great experience in a fast-paced industry,” Terry recalls. “Within three years, I was managing people and leading a team, and I was in high demand because there weren’t many engineers that knew about designing cellular systems in the early 1990s. It was nice to have a choice of where to go next.”

Terry decided to join a small startup company of less than 100 employees called Nextel, giving him a front row seat to watch the company grow as it built a brand new digital cellular network nationwide. Terry was responsible for the New York metropolitan area, one of Nextel’s top markets. A hot stock in the 1990s, they also sold an array of two-way radio equipment services to financial institutions on Wall Street, which Terry routinely problem-solved for.

Seeing Terry’s potential, Nextel sponsored him to attend business school at MIT. When he graduated, they relocated him to their headquarters in Mclean, Virginia, where he hoped for a role that was more strategic and less technical. Nextel was highly leveraged at the time, with no money from public sources available to build the nationwide network they envisioned, so they decided to

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use a franchise model in which outside sources would pay to have cell towers or systems installed in secondary and tertiary markets that would then plug into the Nextel network. Terry was tasked with pulling together the joint venture between Nextel and the new company, Nextel Partners.

“Essentially, I was in charge of running around Nextel to find out how to build a mini Nextel and the appropriate cost structure for the franchising,” he explains. “I found that it was extremely cost effective to run the SMS infrastructure, which transmits short text messages without using voice channels. I found that, when you build a cell site fully loaded with equipment and commission it on air, it costs $750,000. But to run an SMS service for the entire nation, it costs less than $250,000. Thus, I could see that SMS would be the most profitable business for the mobile operators.”

Terry worked in that capacity for a while, but by early 2000, he felt an entrepreneurial drive to leave Nextel and cofound his first company. At the time, a slew of young entrepreneurs were raising millions of dollars to launch Internet companies, so Terry had spent some time trying to find a promising opportunity at the intersection of SMS and the dot com game. After coming up with the idea to develop a plug-in for websites that could push time sensitive alerts to mobile devices, he leveraged his experience from MIT to write a business plan and launched InphoMatch.

Quitting his comfortable job with Nextel to jump into the entrepreneurial world was a move Terry had never really intended to make. The Nextel stock was flying high, and the company was very generous with option grants. His parents had always taught him to prize security and stability, and while he believed he was making an informed decision, the risk was still considerable. “Going through the process of giving up a regular income to jump into something completely unknown was life-defining for me,” he affirms. “In a way, I didn’t feel like I was ready. I had envisioned myself climbing the corporate ladder, but I had to listen to my gut. Did it feel right? If it didn’t work out, would I still feel peaceful with myself? I found that the answer was yes, and there were others counting on me to be a leader, so I had to go through with it.”

They moved into their first office on May 1st of 2000 and spoke with eBay, Yahoo, eTrade, and other websites where users could benefit from the delivery of time sensitive information alerts, but the idea ultimately never took off. “From that experience, I learned that the first idea you’re able to raise money for doesn’t necessarily have to be what ends up working for you,” Terry recalls.

“It’s now generally called the ‘pivot’. In today’s fast-paced 58

environment, it’s very common that companies start off thinking one thing will happen, but then acquire more data, see new opportunities, and pivot in another direction. That’s what entrepreneurs do. They start somewhere, jump into it, come to understand the challenges differently, find new opportunities, and are able to leverage their assets, connections, and relationships to turn the business in another direction.”

Thus, Terry and his team pivoted. In 2001, carriers began to offer two-way SMS services, but only internally. At that time, an AT&T subscriber could only exchange messages with another AT&T subscriber, but not to someone using another network. With hundreds of mobile carriers at the time, Terry saw in this limitation an opportunity to leverage the technology InphoMatch had already built to offer a platform to allow users to send messages between networks. They put together a presentation and took their idea to the carriers, many of whom were extremely resistant at first because they saw it as a disincentive for users to remain in-network. “The lesson I learned from that experience is that it doesn’t really matter what people say,” Terry reflects. “If you have an insight and you believe you’re right, keep at it. There will be plenty of people who say no and have their reasons, but if you believe in your idea and its power to transform an environment, don’t give up.”

Staying steady despite the initial opposition, Terry and his team decided to build a business model in which InphoMatch assumed all the risk. Carriers who signed up could use their technology and hosted infrastructure without paying anything unless their users utilized it and actually sent out-of-network messages. Acting as the bridge between the hundreds of mobile carriers simplified life for each individual carrier, making both operational and financial sense. Carriers would sign long-term, transaction-based deals with InphoMatch at almost no initial cost to them, which was instrumental in monetizing the service over time but also meant that the company had to raise substantial amounts of venture capital in its bet on that outcome.

“That bet turned out to be the right one,” Terry affirms. After InphoMatch signed its first few carriers, a domino effect ensued, and before long, the company had claimed around 80 percent of the market share.

Showing great foresight, they had built the company in a very scalable manner, allowing them to simply add pieces to the network instead of needing to change the entire design when they had to increase their capacity every several months.

Despite the many things Terry and his team did right, he reflects on the many mistakes he made as a naïve

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

young entrepreneur as well. “I didn’t realize that you have to be aware of politics even when dealing with a startup,” he says. “I was very outspoken and open about decision making, and when InphoMatch came under new leadership, that kind of personality wasn’t in the agenda.” With that, Terry left, spent a year in Asia, and then spent two years working as the COO of another startup company, Way Systems.

Terry had essentially jumped from a middle manager position at Nextel to a CEO position at InphoMatch, so serving as a COO gave him an invaluable opportunity to fill on some of the essential knowledge and experience gaps he had missed in the leap. “At the time, young CEOs were relatively rare,” he remarks. “People had this sense that you needed a gray-haired and experienced veteran to run the show, so as a young CEO, I was always second-guessing myself. Thus, having that chance to run a company without being the CEO really rounded out my perspective and my confidence. It was kind of like my real training for what would come later.”

Terry still had his ownership in InphoMatch, however, and when the company was deciding whether to make an initial public offering or to sell in 2006, he was brought back by the board and venture capitalist firm to help. “I pushed for the company to sell, not only because it was in my interest, but because it also seemed to be in the company’s interest to exit the market as soon as possible, as the market dynamic had changed significantly,” he observes. “I started that company in my dining room with a couple of guys, and never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be acquired by Sybase for $425 million in cash.”

After the sale, Terry and his cofounder and technology partner got together and decided to have another go at it, taking the things they learned from the InphoMatch ride and starting another company, but this time on their own terms. Thus, Hook Mobile was launched in 2007. “By that time we knew that, when venture capitalists bet on a company in its early stages, they’re more betting on the person and the team,” Terry says. “Thus, as the President and CEO, it was my job to get the right team in place and to make sure we were moving forward.”

Like InphoMatch before it, Hook Mobile went through a series of pivots after realizing they were making a technology and trying to find a market for it, rather than looking at where the market was heading and building a technology in anticipation of that need. MMS, or picture and video messaging, was supposed to be the next big thing after SMS. Facebook had delivered SMS alerts to its users via InphoMatch, and in 2007, it opened its platform so third parties developers could build applications

within Facebook. Terry envisioned building a web service interface to allow anyone to grab the rich media content in Facebook or MySpace to their phone over MMS, delivering socially generated content and charging the user for providing that service.

After talking to an array of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, however, it became clear that mobile would be trending toward apps and smartphones instead.

“I realized that, even if there’s business to be had at the moment, that business in itself is not right for a venture capital-backed company because VCs would rather bet on something that has a bigger payoff later, versus an execution play,” Terry observes. “Companies’ resources were trending toward apps, so we trashed that idea, pivoted, and asked ourselves, ‘What do we believe in, where is the market going, and what service do we want to provide?’”

Now, Terry and his team are essentially launching a brand new startup, this time cognizant of consumer data indicating there’s a ten to one chance that consumers are engaging with mobile content through an application versus a browser. “For instance, a person is far more likely to check the game score via the ESPN app than by launching a browser,” Terry illustrates. “In the gaming industry, the chance that the user is playing the game through an app instead of through a browser is maybe 10,000 to 1. Therefore, all the user acquisition marketing and tracking tools that have been designed for web browsers are becoming obsolete.”

Terry believes that user acquisition via mobile devices will be a very different game, and one in which Hook Mobile is poised to be a key player, boasting a business model that banks on cost per install and cost per engagement, rather than the cost per click model used for user acquisition in browsers. “At the end of the day, the trigger is the download of the game,” he explains. “The plug-in then allows gaming or app companies to incentivize players to share the game with people in their address book.

On average, each user has about 250 contacts, and Hook Mobile will be able to provide intelligence associated with those contacts to enable targeted user acquisition.”

As Hook Mobile’s prospects continue to brighten, Terry’s journey so far is a testament to the daily struggle of the entrepreneurial life. “It’s never easy,” he readily concedes “It’s very difficult to repeat success and to keep at it, and it’s even harder to do that in the face of adversity.

It’s part skill, part planning, part execution, and part luck, but for me, it’s worth it. It’s about my team and I working toward something and succeeding together.”

Terry and his wife, Liz, take this idea of succeeding together and apply it to their philosophy of giving back, which involves sitting on the boards of non-profit and Terry Hsiao

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educational institutions and the launch of an endowment at Rutgers for needy students. “I hope to lighten the world in some way,” Terry explains. “I hope to have a net positive effect on the lives of the people around me.”

In advising young people entering the working world today, Terry stresses the importance of opening one’s self up to experience. “Broaden your views,” he says.

“Travel as much as you can. Learn as much as you can about everything, because you don’t know now which thing will change your life. And don’t be afraid of do-

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ing something you’re not comfortable with. Take on the world, but at the same time, understand that you need training and education to ultimately get to where you want to go.” Building up the knowledge base and skill set to know your limits gives you the power to take successful risks that ultimately expand those limits, spinning seemingly spontaneous accidents into success at each stage in life and preparing you to make the most of the opportunities life presents.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

David Isaacson Creating Your Own Destiny “Tomorrow is the new millennium. Do you like your job? Do you like your life? Are you the person you want to be when you enter 2000?”

Waiting in traffic to drive through a DUI checkpoint on December 31, 1999, David considered the words he had just heard from the radio advertisement for a fitness club. One would expect he liked his job, since he was earning more money than he knew what to do with, and one would expect he liked his life, since with that money came parties, popularity, and the attractive girlfriend he was on his way to see that New Year’s night, being that he was the designated driver. But the advertisement struck a strange chord in him, and as he inched through traffic, he realized that he did not, in fact, like all these things. Could it be that he was doing it all wrong?

“I thought to myself, ‘You know, they’re right. If I’m ever going to change, now is the time,’” he says. “I’d helped start eight businesses for and with other people, but I’d always wanted to start my own company, and for several years I’d been trying to work towards being a better person. I realized this was my chance, and I needed to take it.”

Being the doggedly self-motivated person that he is, David wasted no time in making his change. He dumped his girlfriend, quit his job, and by January 14, 2000, had incorporated his new business, Technology Management Inc. (TMI). Today, TMI is a $5 million company dedicated to delivering IT, web, and development services to businesses and associations around the world. “We’re like the doctors of the IT world,” he explains. “If we can’t fix your computer problems over the phone, we’ll come to your office and manage as much or as little as you want us to.”

The company, which is open around the clock, offers a standard rate for all customers, which levels the playing field but also invites a variety of business requests. “In our fourteen years of business, I’ve seen all kinds of drama,” he says. “I’ve seen millionaires throw tons of dollars at a minor problem, and paupers spending little money on giant problems. The real challenge I’ve found is finding the

right amount of spending for each client based on that client’s needs and resources. Our main objective is to put technology in simple terms so everyone can understand it and make intelligent decisions for their business.”

TMI earns 40 percent of its income from financial service firms, with the rest generally stemming from graphic companies, printing companies, and defense contractors. While the business works with a variety of companies of all sizes, the preferred size is between 25 and 50 employees, since companies any larger tend to have their own IT department on hand. To mediumsize and larger companies that require semiconstant support, David assigns a handful of workers that focus the majority of their time on that particular client alone.

David is quick to acknowledge that most of the company’s success is a reflection of his team of 27 employees, which he carefully handpicks based on their knowledge in the field and integrity as people.

“My biggest success is surrounding myself with good people who do what they think they need to do and get it done right,” he says. To ensure the quality of his product, he has all his workers earn and maintain both Microsoft and Cisco certifications.

As David’s ninth start-up, TMI is his most successful business endeavor, in part due to the efficiency of the model and management, but also because of his sheer willingness to work harder than anyone else. “I regularly put in 100-hour work weeks, since most weekends I’m on call, and I never want to turn a person away,” he says. “I never mind the interruptions, because I get to help people in those times, and on weekends I don’t want my employees to have to come in. Besides, I enjoy staying busy. I hope one day I can live in a house in St. Thomas overlooking a bay, but I know right now, I would get too bored.”

David is inarguably a self-motivating person, yet he readily acknowledges that a large portion of his work ethic stems from a desire to reclaim the Isaacson name. His grandfather had been a dignified and beloved doctor in his day, but his father, who worked for IBM for 31 years, struggled in applying himself to his work, which led to

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David and his sister’s constant uprooting as children. “My father could never put his nose to the grind-stone to grow with the company and land a promotion the traditional way,” he says. “He didn’t like to work hard, so after he had reached the end of the six-month grace period for a new hire at one branch, he would transfer to another, where he would be promoted up a level based on his pseudoprevious experience.”

Because of his father’s flighty nature, David and his older sister grew accustomed to starting over at a new school each year, such that he attended five elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools, all of which were spread across the country. “We were constantly moving, be it to Boca Raton, Dallas, or Germantown, Maryland,” David recalls. “My father had little regard for the family element, so that even when he was around, he wasn’t really present. He’d be watching sports or playing poker, never really taking an interest in what we were doing.”

Due to a lack of guidance and general interest from his parents, David became fiercely independent from a young age and began experimenting with ways to make the most of his situation. Just five days into starting tenth grade in high school, his father informed him they would be moving again by the end of the year to return to Washington, D.C., but instead of seeing the news as a negative, David saw an opportunity. “I had always been a heavier, geeky kid who liked to play video games, but I had always really wanted to be a jock,” he says. “Because we were going to be leaving anyway, I decided to beef up and try out for the football team, just to see if I could. I had nothing to lose because if I made a fool of myself, I was going to be taking off anyway. I started really working towards this new goal, getting fit and making all these friends. By the time we left, I had transformed myself into the popular kid, and I remember realizing that I really could control my own destiny and be whoever I wanted to be if I worked hard enough at it.”

The family relocated to Derwood, Maryland, where David once again exercised his newfound skills in transforming himself into whoever he wanted to be. When summer rolled around, his father informed them they would be moving again shortly, but David decided he had moved enough. “I was going into my senior year, getting ready to apply to college, and I had made some real friends, so I told him I was staying right where I was,” David recalls. “I was going to be eighteen soon, so I forged my Dad’s signature on my school transcript and on a letter of intent to get my own apartment. He left, and I stayed behind. It was a little scary at first, but I was proud to finally put my foot down and take control of my own life.”

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To support himself, David began working in a video rental store every day after school, which provided him with just enough to get by. While his living situation may not have been ideal, he was thrilled with finally being able to be on his own. He applied to college like the rest of his classmates; however, realizing he could not afford higher education on his own, he turned to his father for help.

“I had been accepted to the University of Delaware and James Madison University, and luckily my father said he was willing to pay my tuition,” he says. “He had two conditions, however: I had to attend James Madison, and I had to get a 4.0, because he would only pay for A’s.”

David’s heart had been set on the University of Delaware, but knew he could not pass up his father’s help, so begrudgingly, he packed his bags and left for school, where he intended to study Computer Science. Despite his efforts to make the most of the situation, however, his heart just wasn’t in it, so he set about creating a new destiny for himself. Returning home to Derwood, he decided to try his hand in sales and technology at ComputerLand.

“I immediately found I had this natural knack for the job.

I was learning about sales and technology not because I had to, but because I had a genuine interest in it,” he says.

His sales manager, Bill Boecklin, took a special interest in David’s education within the field, sending him to manager classes and helping him build contacts at ComputerLand’s branch in Miami, Florida when the Maryland branch went under.

In Florida, David took the role of Senior Systems Consultant and suddenly found himself making more money than he knew what to do with. “I was 23 years old and very active in the night life there, which led me to meet some very interesting people from all walks of life,” he says. “I quickly found you can make a lot of money when you work on the wrong side of the tracks, and I became incredibly successful as a dishonest and indecent person. But that life wasn’t for me, and I knew it.”

For two years, David immersed himself in the fast life until he realized his business choices were neither sustainable nor conducive to the type of life he wanted for himself in the future. With that, he decided to enroll at Florida State University to study architecture during his off hours, knowing that if his current success slowed down, he would have a degree to fall back on. “I didn’t want to live the life I’d been living forever, and I knew I’d have to start somewhere, so I tried to be humble about it,” he says. “Before graduating, I had an internship with an architect making minimum wage. I’d sharpen pencils all day and then go home to my water-front property and wild parties.”

During David’s internship, one of the main comput-

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

ers broke, much to the dismay of his boss. They brought in one of the most expensive IT workers, but after four hours, no improvements had been made. “I knew exactly what was wrong, so I asked my boss if I could try my hand at it,” David says. “He eventually gave in, and I had it fixed within ten minutes.” After a couple of weeks, the architect had fired his previous IT specialist and hired David as his replacement, thereby cinching David’s career in the technology world despite his hard-earned Bachelors in Architecture.

In 1993, David returned to D.C. to start a new chapter, just in time for the beginning of the dot-com revolution. “I turned to my good friend Charlie Robertello, who I owe almost everything to now,” he says. “He helped me realize that if I spent as much effort being a good guy as I did on being a bad guy, I could be incredibly successful without having to constantly look over my shoulder.”

Together, Charlie and David started a security consulting business, where companies hired them to hack into their systems to find security holes.

David’s reputation in technology security quickly spread, so that he was soon invited to work for a Germanbased security working as a Technical Services Manager at Computer Elektronik Infosys, Inc. The company had created an encryption chip that was unique in its customization ability. Upon learning more about the capabilities and potential of the product, David envisioned that if the chip was put on a network card, all the computers in a company’s network could be scrambled in the same fashion, providing a heightened security environment. “The idea is to build private networks, which we also realized we could do by putting the chip on a hardware controller as well,” he explains. The company was extremely successful for the nine months he was there, until eventually it was shut down by the government.

After Computer Elektronik Infosys was closed, David leveraged his contacts and was quickly picked up by a Seattle-based IT firm. By that time, starting companies and supporting start-ups became something of a hobby for David, who over the following years invested in six fledgling dot-com companies. “I gained some money and I lost some money from those investments, but I learned so much in general about the business world just from immersing myself in it,” he says. “Being a player was in some way just as rewarding as getting an MBA. I learned marketing, accounting, financials, and all the other pieces that ultimately set you on the path of running your own business.”

In 1995, after spending several years bouncing around the field, he decided to take a more stable job as a Network Support Specialist at one of the big-six account

ing firms. Then, after four years with the company, he decided he had amassed enough expertise and experience that he was ready to start his own business. The idea existed merely as an afterthought for several months, until he heard the radio advertisement on New Year’s Eve of 1999 and immediately set about creating the destiny that he had, in many respects, been preparing for his whole life.

In the past several years, David has brought TMI to the international market, serving customers in England, China and, most recently, Antigua, where he plans to modernize the country’s technology through a five-point plan that begins with education. “Antigua is the largest independent island in the Caribbean, with a little less than a million people,” he says. “It’s our hope to bring the internet to every home on the island, so that by 2014, they can pass a bill instating a one percent government applied tax on goods and services bought online.”

Domestically, TMI has designed and maintained networks for Subway Foods and Northern Virginia Family Services, and consults with the Hawaiian-based nonprofit Parents and Children Together (PACT). “I genuinely enjoy all these projects I’ve been able to do at home and abroad, but I won’t pretend these locations weren’t premeditated,” he laughs. “I think of where I want to be, and then find customers in those locations so I have a reason to go. I have customers in Indiana because I enjoy the Indy 500. My step-son lives in Hawaii, and working with PACT gives me just another reason to visit him multiple times throughout the year.”

While David invests the majority of his time in TMI, and spending time with his friends and family, he serves on the Board of the Arlington County Chamber of Commerce and with the USS Arlington. He’s also active with a handful of charities, including NextGenNow Arlington and Professional Services Charities (PSC). And even though he recently graduated from Leadership Arlington, a program dedicated to training leaders with a strong focus on community, most of the skills he’s learned as a leader have come directly from experience. “I’m extremely self-motivated, but being a leader is sometimes hard for me,” he admits. “If I had advice to offer the rising generation of business people and entrepreneurs, it would be to find something you’re truly interested in, and then put your heart and soul into it. There’s 100 percent truth in the fact that you’ll only get anywhere by working hard.”

Today, David feels most proud to have created a life and business that allow him to constantly recreate himself and take on various roles. “One day I’m in my best suit smoking cigars with the Prime Minister, and the next I’m up until 3:00 AM working on a computer in my grubbiest clothes,” he laughs. “I’m not afraid of anything, espeDavid Isaacson

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cially taking chances, because if you fail, you can always get back up again. The real worst-case scenario is hiding behind your desk and never actually getting in the game.�

By working to create his own destiny on a daily basis, Da-

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vid has not only shed the constraints that held him back before, but has also built pathways to success that, no matter how far he walks, never seem to dead end.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Dennis Kelly Don’t Forget Where You Came From Every American has some personal attachment to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. For Dennis Kelly, that connection was his cousin. “He was a firefighter in Ladder Company 11, one of the closest to the World Trade Center,” Dennis explains. “He was making a difference up in the South Tower that day, and he went down with it, trying to save people’s lives. Ever since then, I’ve felt that the counterterrorism mission has been part of my own.”

Dennis wasn’t sure where that mission would take him. In fact, it took seven years for him to find the right niche. But now, as the President and CEO of A-T Solutions, a company committed to support the counterterrorism missions of its clients, he has found his place serving the armed forces, the intelligence community, law enforcement, and even international partners in a coalition dedicated, much like his cousin was, to helping make the world a better and safer place.

“I do what I do because I want to make a difference,” he says simply. “To me, this has always meant being connected to government somehow.” Dennis started his career in the Navy, serving his country for six years before venturing into the defense contracting industry, where he has remained ever since.

A-T Solutions was founded in April of 2002 as a Service Disabled Veteran Owned small business by Ken Falke, a retired Navy bomb technician. It grew through consultative engagements focused on the bomb and improvised explosive device (IED) threat to a company of 175 employees doing $35 million in annual revenue.

In February of 2008, Ken sold a majority interest in the company to CoVant Management and CI Capital, a private equity company. A-T Solutions had grown out of the small business categorization, and Ken knew he needed a COO to help him take the company to the next level, so CoVant introduced him to Dennis. Knowing he could learn a lot from Ken and then likely move into the top leadership role of the company when Ken retired, Dennis competed for the position and won, coming onboard to help put in place infrastructure, business development

processes, finance and accounting processes, and other key pieces.

In 2010, A-T Solutions began to go after larger, longer-term contracts, diversifying their portfolio beyond the IED threat, so that today, they do intelligence work to get “left of boom,” or to prevent an event from happening. To facilitate this proactive dimension of the company, they bought two intelligence companies in 2009 and 2010, integrating them to form their intelligence group.

They also acquired a small software company in Boise, Idaho, that had been their partner for many years in developing a post blast investigative tool to be used by federal law enforcement and the military. Ken did, in fact, retire, leaving Dennis to take his place at the helm of the company, and today, A-T Solutions is 812 employees strong and recently passed $200 million in revenue. Enjoying almost 20 percent organic growth in 2012, it’s poised to grow between 15 and 20 percent again this year, with a solid pipeline of opportunities and its sights set on further diversification internationally.

Along the road to where he is today, Dennis has always kept close a tattered, leather-bound copy of A Blue Jackets Manual, the book of basics about being a sailor given to every Navy recruit. The leatherbound copy, however, was given to him by his first private sector boss, Bob Hunte, who had also served in the military. Inside, Bob had scrawled a note that read, “Don’t forget where you came from.”

“That touched me deeply,” Dennis remarks. “It essentially said that I came from humble beginnings and would do great things in my career, so don’t forget your roots and the hard work it took to get there. It reminds me that, even if you’re CEO of a company with 800 people working for you, it wasn’t all that long ago that you were one of those people.”

Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that Dennis was just a kid growing up in a blue-collar family in New Jersey. Neither of his parents went to college, but what they lacked in schooling, they made up for in unparalleled standards of honesty and integrity. His father was a truck driver, and

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his mother was a waitress who then went into selling insurance. Recognizing that they would have gone further in life if they had pursued their own educations, they taught Dennis the importance of learning and told him that he had to go to college, though they didn’t have the funds to send him or the experience to guide him there.

As a kid, Dennis dreamed of becoming a pilot from the first time he flew in a plane at the age of eight. He also remembers being deeply moved by watching his mother and grandmother volunteer on a rescue squad in New Jersey. “It impressed me so much that they were making a difference in the community, helping people who were injured in accidents,” he recalls. “Serving the community in such a vital way became such a part of my philosophy that I joined an ambulance corps myself toward the end of high school.”

While he was still a child, though, Dennis participated in Boy Scouts and liked to fish or ride bikes with friends. An early and invaluable lesson in hard work came when a family friend gave Dennis the gift of a horse and a saddle, under the condition that, if a day came when Dennis could no longer keep the horse, he give it away free of charge as well. A neighbor, Alvin Reese, agreed to keep the horse on his farm, as long as Dennis paid him back through manual labor. “It’s interesting how the term ‘hard work’ means different things to different people,” he muses today. “Looking back as a businessman, if I add up the number of hours I worked for him and the kind of work I did, you might say he got an extremely good deal out of the bargain. But in the end, the experience wasn’t about money. It was all about learning how to work hard and be responsible.”

The Kelly family, however, was apt to move around often within the state, and it soon came time for Dennis to bid his horse farewell. “We would joke around that we were like gypsies,” he remarks. “I think my parents were always reaching for something better, which was hard at times, but it really taught me how to embrace change through life, which has served me well.”

Dennis made his first buck working a paper route in New Jersey. His parents divorced, and when he was 14, his mother, newly remarried, moved down to Florida. His father moved to Florida and remarried as well, and Dennis spent his high school years there.

Because the family had only modest means, Dennis was expected to work through high school to provide for his own expenses, including clothes and his car expenses, so he got a job as a bag boy at the grocery store. “I didn’t put as much emphasis on school as I should have, simply because there weren’t enough hours in the day,” he says.

“Like any kid at that age, I was trying to find my way and 66

what I wanted to do in life. That’s when I met a teacher and retired Navy Commander, Joe Vaden, who was the Commanding Officer of the Navy Junior ROTC unit at my high school.”

Dennis’s life would never be the same. The experience was what one made of it, and he became the equivalent of a master craftsman, taking on every responsibility that was offered to him and participating fully in the opportunity to the point that he took on the post of Operations Officer and discovered his latent love of leadership.

“That’s when I realized I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself,” he says. “Commander Vaden challenged me by asking what I was going to do with my life.

Every semester, every grading period, he wanted to see my report card. He took a deep interest in me and was almost like a second father. He really set the foundation for me in terms of what I’ve done since then, and to this day, we still keep in touch.”

Upon graduating from high school, Dennis was accepted into the Navy’s Advanced Electronics Program as a sonar technician, so after completing boot camp in San Diego, he went on to Basic Sonar School, followed

by Basic Electricity and Electronics School, followed by a maintenance school for a specific sonar system. For the first two years of his Navy career, he was in school. He then spent another two years in Yokosuka, Japan, on a deployed ship with the Midway Battle Group. “I saw so much in the Asia Pacific Region—Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and Singapore,” he enthuses.

“It was a great experience, but after that, I wanted to get back to my family on the East Coast.”

With that, Dennis was stationed on a ship in Charleston, South Carolina, where he received Mediterranean deployment and served as part of the battle group that conducted the operation against Libya in 1986. That ship then went into a yard period in Norfolk, Virginia, before having a port change to Newport, Rhode Island. It was there that Dennis met his future wife, Michelle. “She wasn’t thrilled about marrying a sailor who would leave for six to nine months at a time, so I decided to leave the service, but I still wanted a role where I could support the government,” he explains.

That’s when he came across a company called Analysis & Technology (A&T), which had a job opening for someone with expertise in sonar to design tactical decision aids that could predict the performance of a sonar system in a particular environment. Though the company was probably more interested in finding someone with an officer background, Michelle knew someone who worked there and was able to get Dennis an interview with Bob Hunte. The two hit it off, but the next morning, Dennis

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

had to ship out to Guantanamo Bay for refresher training.

When the ship stopped in Earl, New Jersey, for a weapons unload, he remembers walking out on the pier to call Bob and see if he had any news about the position.

To his great surprise, Bob reported that they wanted to offer him the job at a starting salary of $27,000, and to Bob’s great surprise, Dennis accepted on the spot. “Don’t you want time to think about it? Don’t you want to negotiate a little?” Bob had asked. But Dennis replied that the deal was done. He was in.

By the time he left the Navy and started as a Systems Engineer in 1988, Dennis had a year of college credit under his belt thanks to the College Afloat program, so he enrolled in night classes at Roger Williams University to finish his bachelor’s degree. Working full-time and going to school while starting a family didn’t leave him with much free time, but his focus never wavered. Rather, his ambition only grew. Shortly after joining A&T, he took Michelle to a company Christmas party. “She was amazed by how nice everything was, and I told her that someday, I’d be CEO of a company like that,” he says. “And when I made President and CEO of A-T Solutions, she told me she still remembered that night.”

It wasn’t that Dennis was necessarily interested in being a businessman, however. More so, he felt driven to lead. He had left the Navy as an E-6 First Class Petty Officer, and he carried that love of leadership into his business experience. “I love leading a team of people in tackling tough problems, whether they’re technical issues as a Project Manager, or the more strategic, mission-oriented challenges I face today as President and CEO. I think of myself as a snow plow, with a troop of people behind me who need to get to their objective. My job is to push the obstacles out of the way so people can get to where they need to go.”

Through the next several years, Dennis was promoted to VP of Analysis and Technology. Then in 1999, A&T was acquired by Anteon. “I knew I could handle change, but I knew nothing about acquisitions, so I read up on it to get an idea of what to expect,” he explains.

“Whenever there was a meeting with the new company, I wanted to attend and learn everything I could. Because of that, the Anteon folks learned who I was, and as things changed over that next year and people above me opted to leave, I was promoted three different times until I was running the Newport operation of 400 people.”

Several years later, Anteon asked Dennis to consider moving his family to Fairfax to serve as their Senior VP for Business Development. He went for it, and in that capacity, he was responsible for the growth of the company. Everything was going smoothly until one day, the

company’s CEO, Joe Kampf, called him into his office to say that he wanted Dennis to become his new Senior VP for Corporate Communications and Investor Relations.

Dennis had no experience in the field and said he appreciated the offer but was going to stay put, prompting Joe to look at him and say, “Do you think I’m asking you what you’d like to do? No; I’m explaining to you your next assignment. I need you to do this job, and I know you can.”

“He told me that, if I wanted to be CEO of a company one day, the position would be the perfect rounding out of my capabilities,” Dennis remembers. “And he was absolutely right. I went into that job kicking and screaming, but I stuck with it, and after two years, I knew I had built the skills I needed to make my next move.”

That’s when a headhunter contacted him about Tech Team, a publicly traded parent IT company looking for someone to run a wholly owned subsidiary. Indeed, Dennis had been a mover and shaker, acquiring and integrating companies and growing the business from $30 million to $90 million in a few short years. Dennis accepted the position and continued his trend of learning and improving even more, but he stayed in touch with the Anteon senior leadership team. Joe Kampf was also chairman of CoVant, so when the company purchased A-T Solutions, he knew Dennis was the perfect person to call.

Today, Dennis leads A-T Solutions with a focus on the collaborative style of decision making that has allowed him to garner such success throughout his career. “I tend to seek out a fairly wide range of input in making decisions,” he says. “Asking advice like that is a natural way of developing mentor relationships, and mentors were critically important to me throughout my career in moments where I need to decide whether to go left or right.”

Just as influential as any mentor has been his wife, Michelle. “From the time I got my first job, to the nights she would help with my homework when I was getting my degree, to the support she continues to give me today, she’s been here every step of the way to support me,” Dennis says. “When I have a particularly tough problem at work, she’s my sounding board. If she thinks my thinking is wrong on a particular subject, she’ll help me see the other point of view. She’s invaluable.”

Having raised two incredible sons, the Kellys are actively involved in the Catholic Church, where Michelle plays piano in a choir and serves as a CCD teacher and Dennis is a member of the Knights of Columbus. As a Eucharist minister as well, he goes house-to-house once a month delivering communion to home-bound individuals who can’t make it to church. The EOD Warrior Foundation, as well, holds a special place in his heart.

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day, Dennis reminds us that it’s okay—and to be expected—to start at the bottom. “You’ll get jobs that seem menial and are not what you went to college for, but do the best job you can and exceed expectations, no matter what job it is,” he encourages. “Don’t whine about making a pot of coffee. Go the extra mile. If you do that, you will get the attention of management, and you’ll move up the ladder.

Don’t be overly focused on compensation in the early part of your career because, at that point, it’s really not that important. Perform well, and the opportunities will follow.”

Beyond that, Dennis’s life is a testament to the distances one can go by remembering where they started.

As he empowers those around him to save lives through

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counterterrorism efforts today, he makes a point every day to get out from behind his desk and roam the halls of A-T Solutions, understanding the pulse of the company through the perspectives of his employees. “I also have 125 brave souls in Afghanistan that do great work over there, so I go there twice a year to meet with them, eat with them, and sleep in the same conditions,” he says.

“It’s important to see the world through their eyes and to never forget where you came from. Because integral to where you come from is why you’re doing what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for, and those are things that no one can afford to lose sight of.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Stan Krejci Investing In Yourself “So, what is your idea of the perfect job?” Stan Krejci asked the young man sitting before him. Stan, who was doing executive search consulting at the time for The McCormick Group, often provided pro bono career consulting to friends’ children who were recent college graduates and in dire need of focus and direction in their career planning.

Before the young man could answer, however, his father replied, “He wants to get experience in the field and then be the fourth generation to join our family business.”

Stan nodded, but noticed the son’s face drop ever so subtly. After finishing their introductions, the father left, and Stan rephrased his question, “Since what we talk about here is confidential, what really is your idea of the perfect job for you?”

As it turned out, the young man dreamed of becoming a writer for a latenight comedy show, and while he had the wits and intellect to do so, he had no idea how to position himself. As well, the pressure from his father to join the family business had shut him down so that he had spent the previous two years taking virtually no steps toward building his career.

“Often, parents have preconceived notions about what their young people should pursue,” Stan explains today. “They have a hard time letting them figure out what they, themselves, are passionate about. That’s why I focus on just listening to what the college kids say and trying to bring their message out of them. From there, I can help them translate whatever they are passionate about into a career.”

True to form, Stan was able to help the young man identify where his interests and strengths intersected so that, within a short time, he had a job that both he and his father were excited about.

Today, Stan has taken his own advice and followed his passion by turning his pro bono side work into his career. Cultivating his entrepreneurial spirit at the same time, he is now the founding Principal of The SK Group, a firm dedicated to career, transition, and board of directors consulting. He began the firm in 2008 after realizing

he wanted to streamline his consulting career and create a firm of his own, showing his clients that, with a little investment in themselves, they were actually investing in a lifetime of success and fulfillment.

Stan found that the young candidates he encountered in his executive search work were ill prepared for the interview process and ill equipped to articulate their strengths and vision. Thinking of the pro bono work he was doing with recent college graduates, he wanted to offer those services on a broader scope so that more young people would be equipped to identify and take advantage of employment opportunities. Additionally, he had always been disappointed by how the executive search firm had turned away candidates who were either relatively unknown or not camera-ready. “I wanted to help guide these people to as close to perfection as possible, so that they would have a better chance when an opportunity arose for them,” he explains. “There are a lot of hidden gems in that crowd who just need someone to listen to them objectively.”

His business model has been a success, and Stan has streamlined The SK Group into three segments. The first is career consulting.

“This focus allows us to help clients see if the grass really is greener on the other side, and if it is, prepare them for the next career opportunity,” Stan details.

The second aspect focuses on career transition, usually for clients who have recently lost a job and are eager to move to the next phase of their career. “The pace is much faster for transition clients. They need to get back into the job market,” Stan explains. “It can be stressful, but I enjoy the challenge. I have had some clients who walk away, and then return a few months later. I understand that it can be a hard investment, but it can be extremely difficult to get a job in today’s economy, so it is essential to know how to market yourself.”

The third area of focus is working with Boards of Directors. “I began building boards for companies that didn’t yet have one,” he explained. “I also work with experienced executives and entrepreneurs who would like to serve on boards. They become part of my pool of

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prescreened board candidates. Thus, we’re like a liaison between organizations looking to build a board, and the people with the particular skill sets that make them perfect for those positions.”

Stan has always had a gift for working with people, which he inherited from his parents. He was raised in Hammond, Indiana, the third of four children. His father was the manager of a large steel plant, while his mother was a housewife who loved socializing and forming genuine connections with others. An extrovert by nature, his mother was a determined woman who knew how to push her children. When Stan was ten years old, he contracted polio and rheumatic fever. Thankfully, his mother militantly encouraged him to swim to build muscle tone. “I referred to her as ‘The General’,” he laughs, “but the swimming really helped, and I ended up being a successful swimmer for my high school swim team and regained a lot of the confidence that being sick had taken away.”

Both of his parents put a strong emphasis on education, expecting their children to get good grades and stay out of trouble. Each summer throughout high school, Stan attended Culver Military Academy, which he looks back on as some of his best childhood experiences. “It gave me leadership responsibilities at a young age,” he affirms. “I owe them for so much of who I am today.”

After graduating high school, Stan attended Northwestern University, where he studied political science and put his leadership skills to work in running a number of campus organizations. After his freshman year, he was invited back to Culver to teach horsemanship, which helped him decide he wanted to join the Navy ROTC program at Northwestern. He went into the business side of the Navy, and through an accelerated program at George Washington University, he earned an MBA and returned to serve for several more years, including a tour in Vietnam. After the Navy, he and his business partner opened a plant store with an interior landscaping business in Washington, D.C. After later working in the paging and cellular industry with Metrocall, Inc., for eight years, Stan joined Land-

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mark Systems Corporation as its Chief Financial Officer.

He then joined the local office of Boyden, an international executive search firm, as the Co-Managing Director and Partner. From there, it was an easy transition to The McCormick Group, where he was a Managing Consultant, Business Development, and Head of the Board of Directors Services Practice Group. “I loved working with people at those two executive search firms,” Stan said. “It wasn’t until I started working there that I realized finance had only been an area of interest for me, and my real passion was in human capital consulting.”

In the summer of 2007, Stan underwent open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve. The period of recuperation proved to be a career-defining time for him, focusing his mind on what he wanted to do with the rest of his professional life. “I enjoyed working with the college kids and professionals in transition and wanted to devote my time to that, so I started my own consulting firm focusing on those areas of interest.”

Since that time, Stan has made a career out of advising people entering and transitioning in the business and entrepreneurial world, and in offering advice to those demographics, he recommends always being prepared for the worst-case scenario. “If your company suddenly goes under, or you’re unexpectedly let go, you want to know you have your resume, biography, and vision statement prepared so you don’t lose momentum,” he says. “I see people all the time who simply weren’t prepared, and, while they were able to get back on their feet eventually, they lost so much time and so much peace of mind by simply not being ready.”

Ultimately, Stan feels he has created a life and career for himself based on his cornerstone value, which is to help the people around him in whatever capacity he can.

He hopes that looking back, he will be remembered for being a good friend, a good husband and father, and a professional who did his job well, empowering and equipping people at every stage of their professional lives to realize their true potential.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Fran Kysela Subjective and Objective When Fran Kysela tasted his first glass of wine at the age of fifteen, he was entranced. His father, who to this day maintains a cellar containing more than 4,000 bottles, opened the door for Fran, bringing him along to tastings near their hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Fran’s own interest and passion would take him beyond the experience of tasting through a gateway into the vast and diverse culture and history that begins to complete the bigger picture of wine, not just as a taste, but as the product of civilizations that stretch back thousands of years.

But it would be his entrepreneurial drive, keen analytical sense, and perseverance that would lead him to success in business, founding KYSELA Pere et Fils (KPF), a specialty importer of wine, craft beer, sake, and liqueur that is now 19 years old. KPF works with nearly 200 suppliers, has over 4,000 active SKUs, works directly with suppliers in 13 countries, and this year will ship over 428,000 cases for $28 million in revenue.

“I am passionate about planning, building, and maintaining my business,” Fran says, “but I love wine in particular because of the history and culture surrounding it. This business has allowed me to travel all over the world and to expose myself to so many different peoples and places. When I’ve visited these countries, I’ve seen their cultural heritage, their various foods and wines that match, and the lay of the land. These are the most unique experiences of my life.”

Sometimes Fran is exposed not just to a region’s cultural heritage, but also to their cultural present. “In the last couple of years, I’ve traveled four times to South Africa,” he says. “The country has gone through and continues to withstand serious political strife. But it is an incredibly beautiful country, unlike anywhere else. Not just the topography and the lay of the land, but the culture’s history and present nature add such richness to the experience of the wine.”

Anyone who has tasted wine is familiar with its potent allure. The first evidence of wine production stretches back earlier than 4000 BCE in the Balkans, and its evolution to the present day continues stronger than

ever, thanks to the innovations of modern science and the exploration of novel wine-producing regions. “U.S. wines are fantastic,” Fran says. “The last 35 years have seen significant improvement.”

His interest extends beyond wine. “When it comes to craft beer, the U.S. is making some of the best and most interesting,” he remarks. “Some breweries like to throw in whole peaches, cocoa, wood chips, etc. It can get a little wacky. Sometimes I think they’d like to throw in auto parts. Recently I had a beer that had cocoa and coconut marshmallows. Is that a beer or a dessert?”

Fran has also recently become fascinated with sake. He has taken educational sake courses and traveled to Japan to source his own premium sake. “The product is underappreciated in the U.S. market, but it’s definitely gaining interest,” he remarks.

Despite his fascination with the taste experiences of these products, however, Fran has always maintained an essential self-discipline. He has had to perform a balancing act between his own subjective palate and appreciation for taste and culture on the one hand, and on the other the fiercely competitive, objective reality of the business world.

“When you start out with your business for the first time,” he remarks, “you’re headstrong and you don’t take to other people’s opinions much. But as you get older, you learn that you need to build consensus. That’s something you learn through trial and error. You’ve got to be able to change gears quickly. You can believe in an idea, but you can’t be married to it. If something isn’t working, you have to drop it. It’s not about your agenda; it’s about what works in the marketplace. I meet people in the import business who say that they won’t sell anything that they don’t personally like. That’s a mistake. You can’t like them all.”

Fran speaks from experience. Years ago, he committed himself to developing his business in California.

“I found that I could only get it running up to about $3.2 million,” he recalls. “The critical mass for our profitability is really $4 million. I was so attracted to being bi-coastal, but at a certain point I had to shelve the whole thing. I sold off the pallet racking, moved all the wine out, and

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discontinued the business.”

Fran says it was a tragic lesson, but an important one. “Just because I was attached to the idea of having a California operation,” he says, “doesn’t mean that the business conditions were right for it. There is a reality to business. Sure, I’m a wine lover, but if I don’t run my company as a business then I won’t succeed.”

And Fran is no mere wine lover. Recipient of the Master Sommelier award from the British Court of Master Sommeliers, he is one of 129 individuals in the world who have received such an honor. And on the business side, KPF in 2011 was rated among the top five small importers by Wine Enthusiast Magazine. Indeed, walking the fine line between subject and object has allowed Fran to lead KPF in steady growth over its nearly 20 year history.

Fran credits his entrepreneurial instinct to his grandparents, who both ran their own businesses. “One grandfather ran an accounting service and an answering service,” he says, “while the other did insurance and antique collecting and sales. Both invested in real estate.” Today, Fran also has real estate investments, renting around twenty houses, and he traces his grandparents’ entrepreneurial influence back to when he was 17, though he had already started thinking about owning his own business by that point. He made his first buck cutting lawns when he was 12 years old, but the real deal came when he first left for college.

When Fran enrolled at Miami of Ohio, his parents were willing to help pay for his education, but he would still need to earn the bulk of his tuition himself. So Fran, his younger brother, and a friend decided they would start a painting company. When they needed a work truck, it was Fran’s grandfather who sold it to them. “Back then,” he recalls, “my entire college education was 30,000 dollars, and we were able to make most of that through the painting company. We painted about seventy-two houses in four years.”

Fran graduated from Miami of Ohio in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology and a focus in zoology. And although he had experienced his first taste of running a business, he was still focused on academia.

“When I started grad school,” he says, “I was still thinking of something in medicine.” His father was a dentist, and Fran had inherited his analytical approach. But just as his father had first introduced him to the taste of wine, so would he introduce his son to the business of wine. “My father was on the lookout for a job I could work while I was in grad school,” Fran recalls. “He connected me with two gentlemen named Jerry and Larry Goodman, who were looking for a wine salesman. I gave it a try and I im72

mediately liked it.” Before long, the wine business became all-consuming, and Fran left grad school altogether.

“I was 25 years old,” Fran continues, “and I just realized, wow, this is what I want to do. I had been experimenting with wine tasting, and I found some of the tastes so intriguing. And as soon as I came to understand wine, I began to grasp that there was a human and cultural component to it. When that clicked, it was the eureka moment I needed. Beyond that, I could see that this was a good business. There’s cash flow. There’s potential here.

It took another decade or more for me to fill in the broad strokes. You really have to fill those in as you go.”

Fran worked for the Goodmans for about a year as a sales agent selling a wine portfolio to restaurants. While there, he started as a sommelier at a restaurant and eventually transitioned into full-time there. Then, one day, he received a phone call asking if he wanted to sell wine for a company called Bauer and Foss, an international wine distributor, in Ohio. He accepted and worked for the company for five years, performing as the top sales person for most of that time. Following Bauer and Foss, he spent another five years working for an importer that saw an average of four million dollars in sales per year. Altogether this experience totaled 14 years, and Fran thinks it was all essential before he finally started Kysela Pere et Fils in March of 1994.

“By that time I was 37 years old,” he says, “and I think I reached a pinnacle in terms of my energy, experience, and skills. When you’re 37, you’re ready to go out and do something. If you’re going to be self-made, you need to be ready to nail that down sometime between thirty and forty-two. You need the seasoning not to make the wrong moves, but you don’t want to start too late, either. Some people tell me they want to get into the wine business, and the first two things I ask are their age and their experience. In wine there is a sweet spot between vitality and experience.”

According to Fran, when he first started KPF there were 18 wholesalers in Virginia, and today there are closer to 70. But that didn’t make Fran’s job any easier. “Eventually we gained favorable reviews,” he says, “which helped open doors. But initially I had to open those doors myself.

I had to be persistent. My ability to hustle and to manage the small amount of money I had was what made it work for me.” Since starting the business, Fran has seen steady growth with only a mild, temporary downturn during the nadir of the financial crisis in 2008. And although he’s still smaller than some in the region of Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., his value comes from the subjective attention he is able to give to his wines.

“Our producers are typically more artisanal—more

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

hands-on, and more niche,” Fran explains. “We are generally the sole source for any wine that we purchase. We purchase wines that are unique, and our selection is diverse. No one else has 1,000 SKUs of diversity.” KPF is also focused on value. “We focus on bang for your buck,” Fran affirms. “We sell mostly twenty dollar bottles or less. We do sell some very high-end wine, but most bottles are under twenty dollars.”

In considering KPF’s size, Fran remembers a conversation he had with one of his father’s acquaintances when he was younger, a wine enthusiast who had been a vice president at GM. “Long before I started my own business, I was at his house with my father, and he spoke about a small business he had started and grown since

leaving GM,” Fran recalls. “His advice was that there is always room in business for a good, small company. I feel like I have realized that advice.”

Fran’s own best advice is a natural expression of his own experience, and begins with passion. “Find something you’re going to like right away,” he says, “and stick with it. If you start moving around a bunch, you’ll run out of time to get in on the ground floor of what you really want to do. You’ve only got so much time on this earth.

Find your passion and stick with it.” And as a natural companion to passion, Fran continues with a final reminder to never forget the objective reality of business.

“Always put everything in writing.”

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Vijay Lakshman The Fantastical Realist “Get out!” the Grand Master shouted as ten-yearold Vijay Lakshman walked into his first martial arts class.

“No children allowed!”

Terrified, Vijay slammed the door shut and waited in the hallway until his father joined him. Dr. Lakshman was aware that this martial arts school only trained adults, but it was the most prestigious and rigorous program in the Washington D.C. area, and he knew his son was up for the challenge. What’s more, the Iran Hostage Crisis was playing out and causing turmoil and angst all over the United States, such that boys in the neighborhood had begun harassing and attacking him after school for his Indian descent. “Sometimes I’d be chased home from school, but I had a stubborn streak and would always stop to fight back, which inevitably ended in my getting beaten up,” he recalls. “My dad had noticed a couple of workers at his hospital that would practice karate forms on their lunch break, so he asked them how I could get involved.”

His father explained the situation to the Grand Master of the class, who allowed them to stay and watch the rest of practice.

“After that class, he asked me if I really wanted to train with them, and I told him that yes, I did,” Vijay recalls. “So he told me he’d train me under three conditions: I had to pay for my $50 monthly dues myself, I could never miss a single practice unless I called first and was excused, and I had to behave well at home and at school. If I failed any of those three conditions, I was automatically out.”

Vijay agreed to his Sensei’s conditions, and for the next 23 years, he did everything he could to uphold his end of the deal. He cut grass until he was old enough to work a formal job to pay his dues, and he made every single three-hour, six-day a week class. “That program demanded so much discipline and dedication, and I think it really followed me throughout my entire career,” he says. “When I was little, I didn’t understand that it was all about leveraging your body weight and motion. I thought it was pure magic, so it gave me the attitude that anything was possible, and I grew up with a deep-rooted belief in myself.”

Today, Vijay is the Chief Product Officer of Naaya, LLC, a game-based social learning platform for elementary schools focusing on global and social studies. The company was founded several years ago by Amir Hudda and Noorali Sonawalla in an effort to reinvent the relationship between education and video games. “When I met Amir, I was really intrigued by his vision of allowing kids who don’t have much travel experience to gain some level of understanding of other countries, almost like a guided field trip,” Vijay explains. “The game itself is focused on teaching children through experiential learning, rather than teaching towards a test. When you teach for a test, the kids will memorize something but the learning doesn’t stick.

It’s in short-term memory, without context, which doesn’t prove most effective for longterm retention. But with this program, for example, kids can learn about a country’s flag by being given the task of coloring in that flag correctly, and are then rewarded with an animal native to that country to keep as a virtual pet. This way, the kids can choose their own reward, and they learn through the experience of that activity.”

Currently, the company is working on a game unit focused on Peru, and will launch their first pilot in classrooms as soon as the product meets the necessary high quality standards. They plan to add more countries to the series until it covers the entire globe. In the meantime, the company hopes not only to educate children on the subject matter of their particular learning unit, but to also allow them to gain fluency in the digital community, as well as a cultural awareness through exposure to the planet’s diverse people, myths, and traditions.

When Vijay crossed paths with Amir, he had spent the previous three and a half years at National Geographic developing their entry into the digital entertainment media space, which was exactly the kind of experience needed at the fledgling company, Naaya. “It was perfect timing for us both, so I could really come in and add value to this great vision he was trying to put in motion,” Vijay says. He started as a consultant in August of 2012, and has since moved up to his present position, where he has the

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creative freedom to make the company a truly innovative asset for teachers, students, and classrooms.

Vijay’s current role in raising global awareness seems to be a natural fit, given that he began his own world travels from the moment he was born. When his mother was eight months pregnant with him, she and his father decided to take a family vacation, which resulted in his being born in an emergency hospital in Ottawa, Canada.

Shortly thereafter, they returned to Bangkok, where his father taught as a professor of medicine at the University of Thailand. His mother had a Masters in Library Science, but she worked as a Middle Eastern language specialist.

But the family’s love for travel took them all over Asia, so that Vijay’s early years were spent in Thailand, India, and the South China Sea. When he was six years old, the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he was placed in a class to learn English. They soon relocated to Washington, D.C., where his father ran research at the VA Hospital at the George Washington University, developing, amongst other things, a method to test subcutaneous fat to determine a genetic predisposition to alcoholism.

Vijay most enjoyed the summers of his childhood, when he and his neighborhood friends would play kickthe-can until the sun went down and then fall asleep to the sound of cicadas chirping. His school days were less pleasant with the shadow cast from his classmates’ bullying, but karate soon began shifting the way Vijay was seen by those around him. “This was the late 70’s and early 80’s, so there was a lot of mystery and fear around the martial arts,” he says. “When kids began hearing that I was training in karate, they started worrying that I was really dangerous, and began treating me with more respect.” His training became a priority in his life, such that he would come home from school, do homework, arrive at practice by 6 pm, train until 9:30 pm, and then finish whatever homework he had left before bed. “It was grueling, but I loved it. No one was telling me to be there but myself, and that earned me a lot of respect from my instructors,” he says. “Karate kept me away from goofing off or getting in trouble as a kid, which also set me up for future success.”

Throughout his grade school years, Vijay always assumed he would follow in his father’s footsteps to medical school. In his junior year of high school, he won the American Heart Association Award for Emphysema and Arteriosclerosis after scoring well on a rigorous exam, which granted him a summer internship at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. “That was my first clinical experience, and though I thought it was interesting, I found I didn’t have a huge desire to do it,” he explains. “I continued with that path, though, because I was under the impression that you had to be a doctor to be successful.”

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When he graduated from high school, he attended George Washington University. His father’s research with the school granted him free tuition, and Vijay found it a good fit not just for the exceptional education it offered, but also for its close proximity to his martial arts school.

By the time he graduated in 1991, he had earned a degree in Information Systems and Technology in the Business World, with minors in sociology, psychology, and creative writing—all of which he accomplished after fulfilling his medical school prerequisites. “When I was choosing my major, I decided to pick one based in technology and business because I knew that, if medical school didn’t work out, I wouldn’t want the type of career that a degree in biology would have granted me,” he explains.

Vijay decided to take a year off before medical school to save enough money to cover his tuition, so he applied to Bethesda Softworks as a designer. When they called to offer him the job, they explained they needed a project manager, for which they would pay him a salary $23,000. He told them he would work for $3,000 less if he could instead have the title of Executive Producer, which they agreed to. A few months later, he created a game that won Best in Genre in its category, immediately catapulting him up the ladder in the gaming industry. “I got all these offers from other companies, so it seemed pretty obvious that this was the career path I should stay on,” he says. “I’ve never looked back, because with this business, I can be a race car driver one day, an astronaut the next, or a zombie hunter the next. It flexes every muscle in my brain, from the creative writing side to the mathematical and logical side. Product development follows a very strict discipline, but games have to be compelling and creative, so it’s a constant challenge to straddle those fences.”

Vijay stayed with Bethesda Softworks for several more years, during which he was granted complete creative control after creating a Game of the Year, this time in the roleplaying genre. Yet it was not until he joined Looking Glass in Boston that he truly began to test his limits and gain a more nuanced understanding of the business side of the work he was doing. “I had lived in D.C. my entire life, so when I moved to Boston I realized how repetitive my life had become,” he says. “It had been very comfortable, so when I moved, I did a lot of growing up, and I learned what my real strengths and weaknesses are as a leader and a creative thinker. I certainly made a lot of mistakes, but I learned how to recover from them as well.”

When he moved to Chicago to work, Vijay was lucky enough to be paired up with people who were masters at the art of location-based entertainment—the kind you find in arcade games. “You have to create a product that someone can walk up to, put a quarter in, and learn

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

how to play in less than 60 seconds, so they keep putting more quarters in,” he explains. “That takes a huge amount of creativity, because usually, the simpler a game is, the more thought you have to put into it. That was an interesting learning experience.”

After several years in that capacity, Vijay moved to Austin, Texas, where the startup company he joined had been funded close to $9 million to work on nextgen PS2 and XBOX360 titles. “We had the team ready to go and great products ready to begin development, when suddenly the investing company decided to downsize their external development studios and effectively cut us off. We lost everything,” he explains. With nearly nothing in his pocket, he was recruited by Universal Studios in California to work as their Executive Producer. Two weeks after starting, however, he found out his wife, who was still in Texas with their year-old son, was filing for divorce. “It was totally unexpected, and I was devastated,” he says. “But my boss-to-be, Jim Wilson, sat down with me and told me to take the time I needed to go back to Texas and try and fix things with my family. I was so taken aback that the company was willing to give me that kind of freedom to do what I needed to do without losing my job. I was really moved to see that there are people with holistic views on life—people who really aren’t just focused on the dollar.”

Vijay took the time off, and while he was unable to fix things with his wife, he returned to Universal Studios completely dedicated to his job, with a singular determination to be successful and repay them for their generosity.

“I really needed that break, and ultimately, it allowed me to be so successful that within nine months, I was named the Vice President of Production within the games vertical of Universal,” he says. “There’s a long list of things I have to thank Jim Wilson for, but that was a huge one. He has a real focus on business fundamentals without forgetting that business is people. I consider him an excellent executive and mentor.”

During Vijay’s seven years with Universal, the company sponsored him to attend Harvard Business School’s Fast-Track Executive Management Program. He spent nine months carefully preparing his application for the highly competitive program, so both he and the company were thrilled when he was accepted. Because it would require him to be at the university full-time, Universal agreed to let him leave as long as he promised to return should the company hit a low point and need his help.

While this seemed to be more of a precautionary agreement, it became a reality when Universal found it was having difficulties shipping a product and Vijay was forced to pull out of the program. And though the Dean assured him they would honor his initial acceptance and

allow him to retake the courses when he was ready to, a new Dean had taken office by the time Vijay was ready to return—one who was obligated to uphold HBS’s high standards for acceptance. Thus, without a current application and acceptance, Vijay suddenly found himself with only one week to prepare and resubmit a new application for review. “I was literally back at step one, up for forty hours straight to finish the application for one of eighty slots in a program that has thousands of applicants, but it paid off, because I got in again,” he says. “It was actually a really meaningful experience because it showed me that, at the end of the day, you don’t really know what you’re capable of until you try. I found out I had what it took to accomplish this huge goal if I really applied myself.”

While he may have found success under a tight timeline with Harvard Business School’s Executive Management Program, Vijay has learned the hard way that in most aspects of life, no deadline is as important as maintaining quality of work. Because his college thesis had focused on comparing J.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Universal decided to put him in charge of a game they were creating for the Lord of the Rings franchise. “It was actually a huge task to take on, because the franchise was saying we had six months to produce a game, or they were going to pull out, resulting in licensor penalties,” he explains. “But most games take an average of fifteen months to complete. I knew that, with all the programming and testing we would have to do, we would be lucky to get a 65 percent score when it launched.”

Despite the tall task, Vijay agreed to do it, so long as his supervisors agreed not to blame him if it was less than perfect. He was, in fact, able to create the game and make the deadline with a score of 73 percent—better than he expected, but far below the company’s standards of 90 percent. “That was a huge learning experience for me, because the mistake was rushing it,” he says. “At the end of the day, the franchise would have cared much less about a missed deadline than they would have about a mediocre product.

Nowadays, I tell people to focus on quality first. You only get one chance to make a good impression.”

As a leader, he tries to pass this message along to his entire team. “Trust your people. You need to know what your strengths and weakness are,” he says. “We all take pride in thinking we are capable of doing anything we set our minds to. Yet just because that might be true, it never means you should do everything. I learned that the hard way. I think I’m a better leader for it because I know that, when I hire someone to work on my team, I have to trust them to perform and step away.”

After he left Universal Studios, Vijay found he was at a point in his life where he wanted to apply the things he Vijay Lakshman

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had learned in business and in leadership, so he decided to start his own consulting company, Brilliant Entertainment, Inc. He based the endeavor in Virginia so that he could finally be near his son again. “Starting the business was a leap of faith, but I had made such a great network from the Harvard Program and through Universal that I got a lot of help in finding clients right away,” he says.

“I’ve met a lot of people professionally that are now trusted friends and advisors. I think everyone needs that ability to build and draw upon a network to really be successful.”

While his consulting business immediately started doing very well, he soon realized it was not something he wanted to continue doing for the rest of his life, so he passed the reigns along and began working for the National Geographic Society. Three and a half years later, he was introduced to Amir Hudda, which led to his current work at Naaya. “I’ve had many roles throughout my career, but I feel very happy at Naaya,” he says. “The gaming industry has always been the most engaging kind of challenge to me, and I find myself using just about every class I’ve ever taken, from calculus to creative writing. It’s a career with an infinite possibility space, which I really appreciate.”

Outside of his work at Naaya, Vijay dedicates himself first and foremost to his family. “I get to see my son every other weekend, and for the past fourteen years, even when he was in Virginia and I was in California, I flew across the United States to see him,” he says. “He spends his summers with me, and we are very close, which I am eternally grateful for.” In addition to his oldest son, Vijay has remarried and recently welcomed a second son into the world.

When he thinks forward to the future, he hopes to give more time to his creative writing, which has already begun to take off as a significant side project. “I’ve always

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been a writer, through college and beyond. Certainly a large portion of my work in games is writing, but I didn’t do any creative writing just for myself until 2010. Then I took a trip to India and wrote 35,000 words of what has become two 100,000-word novels! Since then, I haven’t been able to stop,” he laughs. “I finished it in 2012, and immediately started getting offers to make it a trilogy, a movie, or a video game. All these doors just started flying open, and I was so impressed by how the world was so responsive to art and literature. It was wonderful to again see that cash really isn’t the bottom line all the time, and when there are new works of art or ideas out there, we all want to expose them to create a better human condition.”

His book, MythBorn, is a dark fantasy in the style of Game of Thrones, and at the moment, Vijay and his team are working to build out the franchise plan so that, when it formally launches, it will have the best shot at becoming part of American fiction. “This book really represents the culmination of a lot of my life lessons,” he affirms. “It has strategy and tactics, travel, and of course combat, which I feel I can portray quite well given my decades of experience in the martial arts. But what I really love most about the subject matter of this book is the layering of fantasy and realism with believable characters. People are what’s interesting in life, whether in karate or in gaming: there’s something magical and imaginative about great characters, something we relate to and interact with in our everyday lives. As a creative thinker, I feel that’s what a good story is all about.” Just as a sense of magic layered over his childhood experience of martial arts and actually transformed the reality of his daily life, Vijay works every day to bring a transformative message to others: that focus, effort, and perseverance are the cornerstones to success in the real world, bringing life its own kind of magic.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Michael Maholchic Resourceful Resilience Corporate politics never held much appeal for Mike Maholchic. Where his employers valued family ties and aggressive ladder climbing tactics, Mike emphasized honesty, integrity, and hard work.

Although successful by any measure, Mike observed that, over time, his approach would only get him so far in a hierarchy determined by personal relationships more than professional competence. Over-extended and under-appreciated, he embraced the old maxim, “If you want something done right, do it yourself,” and in 1989 set out to create a better business—Thermal Services Incorporated (TSI). But this came with new challenges: a business partner tied up in unsavory deals, another who left and attempted to poach the fledgling company’s clients, and later, a thieving employee whose attempts to cheat the IRS could have brought the entire operation down. Through it all, however, Mike remained the guiding light that successfully transformed the faltering TSI into Facility Engineering Services (FES), which became bigger, better, and more profitable than ever. His ingenuity and resilience in the face of challenges that could have easily felled more established firms have made FES one of the fastest growing—and most reputable—controls company in the business.

That business acumen was the hard-won result of many disillusioning but educational episodes Mike experienced as an employee. Growing up in the small town of Halthorpe, Maryland, Mike had little interest in pursuing a college degree, but studied for two years at Towson to appease his father. He then took on a five-year plumbing and heating apprenticeship with Poole & Kent, a well-known engineering and contracting firm, but was disappointed by the budgeting failures and the opportunities promised but never delivered by the higher-ups.

Showing initiative unusual for someone so young and inexperienced, he approached Johnson Controls in hopes of trying his hand at something a little different.

“My spirit had been broken with Poole & Kent, so I decided I wanted to try a different approach,” he recalls. “When I was on job sites, I noticed that the guys who did the con-

trols always had clean shirts and clean pants. They had a little thermometer and a little screwdriver in their pockets, and they walked around and did all the technical stuff. I decided that was what I wanted to do.”

At the Johnson Controls office in Baltimore, Mike simply walked in and asked to be interviewed. The business wasn’t hiring, but, impressed by his boldness, the engineering manager came down and conducted an offthe-cuff interview. Although there weren’t any positions available at the time, the manager promised to keep Mike in mind for the next opening.

Uncertain of a future offer with Johnson Controls but reluctant to return to Poole & Kent, Mike took his first foray into selfemployment with a small HVAC business.

This suited him well for the better part of a year, but after about 10 months Johnson Controls came back into the picture with a job offer. Mike took stock of his options; with a baby on the way and no health insurance, Johnson’s offer of stability was impossible to turn down. But, ever the go-getter, Mike was not content to fully abandon his dream of owning his own business, and concurrently created a small custom home building enterprise.

As with many of his ventures, Mike moved into custom home building with little more than confidence, intelligence, and a willingness to learn. The idea grew out of a chance encounter—while repairing the HVAC equipment in a client’s home, the man began talking to him about custom home building. “I decided I wanted to try it because it’s less hands-on than installing HVAC systems, and it seemed like a better fit,” he recalls. “So we sat down at his kitchen table and drew an outline of how to become a custom home builder.’” Quickly demonstrating a flair for the business, Mike began buying up properties in Ocean City, Maryland, converting them into condominiums, and selling them at profit. He was also building homes in Carroll County, and all the while gaining a reputation for stellar work at Johnson Controls.

By 1986, Mike was Project Manager on large accounts such as Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Naval Academy, and the Washington Board of Education. The sales-

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man associated with the accounts was promoted to Branch Manager, and Mike eagerly awaited his own expected promotion to fill the newly-vacant role. However, the politics of big business again stymied Mike’s ambitions; after approaching his boss to express interest in the position, his boss informed him that the job would go to the sales’ manager’s brother-in-law, although the brother-in-law had no relevant experience or knowledge of the account. Refusing to be discouraged by the blatant show of nepotism, Mike resolved to consult with the Regional Manager—his boss’s boss—about finding a sales position. Although the Regional Manager seemed amenable to the idea, the branch manager was less than pleased by Mike’s decision and let him know he should begin looking for another job.

Disappointed but ever resilient, Mike wasted no time. He immediately drove into Washington, DC, to seek a job with MCC Powers, a competitor of Johnson Controls.

He was hired to take over as Operations Manager; MCC’s installation operation was losing a stunning $200,000 every month, and Mike was charged with reorganizing from top to bottom. Within a few months, his reforms had turned things around for MCC Powers, but he again ran into complications. “Really there were so many issues and so many glaring problems that I looked like a rocket scientist for turning things around in three months,” he says.

“But ultimately, office politics and competition for my position led me to decide it wasn’t the position for me.” Thus, after six months with MCC Powers and after the position he had wanted at Johnson Controls opened back up, he decided to return to his former employer.

Mike quickly became the top salesman in the company, selling about $2.5 million each year and easily clearing a million in profit. Yet despite his success, he never forgot the rocky road he’d walked to get there. “I went back to work for them, but it was never the same again,” he admits. “I felt the same sense of ambivalence I’d had working for Poole & Kent.” Compounding the difficulties, his coworkers and superiors focused on everything but his sales record. “The politics in the fact that I had this other sideline business became a little bit of a problem,” Mike says.

“It didn’t matter how much I performed or produced— they just didn’t like the fact that I had a sideline business.”

He did his best to ignore the idle chatter, but in January 1989, he finally made the decision that had been so long in coming: if he wanted a guarantee that he would be treated fairly, he needed to work for himself.

For three months, he concentrated exclusively on home building; then, fatefully, he was approached by a fellow ex-employee of Johnson Controls to start their own HVAC service controls business. They each took a 45 percent share of the new company, Thermal Services 80

Incorporated, with the remaining 10 percent split evenly between two other partners.

For a time, TSI ran smoothly, but by the late 1990s, Mike became aware of some dealings he didn’t approve of. A falling out with the other major partner ensued, and Mike ended up buying him out, leaving him with 90 percent ownership of TSI. Attempting to rebrand the business, he renamed it Applied Systems Technologies, but his troubles were far from over. The smaller partners smelled blood in the water, sold their 10 percent, and proceeded to poach a large portion of the business’s clients. “The sudden overhaul nearly drowned AST,” Mike explained. “I went from around $4.1 million in revenue to $1.8 million in 2000.”

In 2001, the company again changed names—from Applied Systems Technologies to its present-day iteration, Facility Engineering Services. The early 2000s were a struggle to build back up in the face of seemingly desperate odds; even his own employees, sensing the danger, were far from optimistic. “People thought they were working on a submarine with a screen door, just waiting for the vessel to sink,” Mike describes. “So I really didn’t have any enthusiasm or drive like you would at a normal job.” Still, he persevered. By 2003, the tides began to turn, and by 2006, they had finally built their revenue back up to about $4.1 million, the same as it had been in 1997 before the name change.

After a couple of years of smooth sailing, however, Mike found himself facing yet another hurdle. In 2006, M&T Bank informed him that the IRS had put a hold on his checking account due to outstanding federal tax payments. An outside accountant looked over FES’s books and found that the source of the issue was employee theft.

Checks that were meant to go to the IRS had been made payable to the accountant. Once again utilizing his unique blend of intelligence, problem solving, and resilience, Mike managed to bring the company back from the brink, securing the necessary $400,000 in financing with a small bank, resolving the problems with the IRS, and recovering money from the employee.

Fortunately, after years of dealing with dishonesty and incompetence, the incident proved to be a major turning point for the company. In 2007, Mike hired Dan Rees, a professor of leadership and organizational change at McDaniel College, in a coaching capacity. Referring to Dan as an inspiration and role model, Mike credits him with helping restructure the entire business for the better. They let go of the sales team and allowed technical people to take over business development. “Once we did that, our sales increased 15 percent almost overnight,” Mike reports.

“We had better opportunities and better profitability. Sales

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

people have a tendency to understate or overstate facts, whereas my technical people were more detail-oriented, allowing the company to develop with a higher level of integrity. Also, in terms of hiring, we began to emphasize character and intelligence over simply technical skills, which made a big strategic difference.”

Today Facility Engineering Services, and Mike himself, are stronger for the trials that have preceded their success. “Not too many exciting things have happened other than the growth of the company,” he relates of the business’s trajectory over the last several years. “In 2007, we were $4 million, and in 2012 we were up to $8 million.

We probably grew about 25 percent in 2012, and we’re growing now at a rate of 15 percent a year. Without the obstacles and hang-ups we ran into in the past, the company is able to flourish at its natural velocity, and we’re very excited about that.”

To young people entering the working world today, Mike offers words of both wisdom and warning. “When a business grows too large and too bureaucratic, its culture

can take on an element of cronyism,” he cautions. “Things become more about taking care of somebody that’s watching your back, and less about actual job performance. In places like that, the only way to get ahead is through politics, which ultimately isn’t the best way to serve clients or promote innovation.”

For those who’d rather avoid that kind of climate, entrepreneurship offers an alternative path forward—one in which the company culture can be shaped according to deeper values and ideals. Napoleon Hill’s classic book, Think and Grow Rich, offers invaluable guidance, as does the inspirational example of Henry Ford. “When Ford wanted to build a V8 engine, his engineer said it couldn’t be done,” Mike relates admiringly. “Ford said, ‘We’ll build it anyway.’” With this same can-do attitude and neversay-die spirit, Michael Maholchic has faced down rivals, bosses, coworkers and employees who got in the way of his business, drawing upon a resourceful resilience to forge a path forward and build a successful company in the end.

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Chris Marentis If You Can Think It, You Can Do It School didn’t come easily to Chris Marentis—not because he wasn’t brilliant, but because the world had not yet come to understand ADHD. “I’ll never forget the time I was sixteen and the school guidance counselor sat down with my mother,” he recounts today. “She said I was a good kid, but they should consider enrolling me in a trade school because academics weren’t my thing.”

When Chris’s father heard about the conversation, however, he wholeheartedly dismissed it, asserting that they had no idea what they were talking about. Indeed, though Chris had been a C and D student, his father never worried about him. Articulate and with a strong sense of emotional intelligence, Chris was the kind of kid with a real presence about him, exuding the sense that there was something more going on.

“My father always had an inner confidence about me,” Chris affirms. “His motto for me was, ‘If you can think it, you can do it.’ To see his unflagging belief stay resolute, I realized I wasn’t defined by the way the school was defining me, and that it was up to me to define myself.” Now the founder and CEO of Surefire Social, Chris has spent the past thirty years living true to his father’s motto: first he thinks up bridges between technology and marketing and media solutions, and then he builds them.

The reality that media would be dramatically changed by technology was first spelled out in the writing on the wall long ago, and Chris noticed it immediately. After serving as the CEO of several venture-backed Web 2.0 startups, he saw that Web 2.0 was democratizing the Internet environment and undermining the economic power that had, in the past, left the playing field so uneven. “I realized that, if you could do a few things in a smart and coordinated way, you could actually have more visibility than anyone else in your market and set yourself apart as an authority,” he remarks. “And I felt that this marked a profound shift for small business owners. While they used to get outmaneuvered by big national manufacturers or lead generation companies that leveraged a national presence to gain visibility at the local level, I believed that, if equipped with the right knowledge and technological

tools, small businesses could have a new opportunity to really succeed.”

To provide a pathway to such knowledge and tools, Chris wrote a book called Surefire Social. He then designed a more robust educational platform to serve as a resource center for small business owners. He had never meant to go into the service business, but people immediately recognized the value of the information he offered, and before he knew it, he was being invited to deliver keynote talks all over the country.

Several months later, people began calling Chris to ask if he could personally assist with their web development, search engine optimization, and social media needs.

Thus, since 2010, Chris and his team have focused on creating scalable solutions that are personable, comprehensive, and integrated. “Most small business owners have their technology rolled out in silos, with different people responsible for their website, search engine optimization, social media, and CRM,” he explains. “We match those clients with a coach or account services person who works with them to implement a cohesive system and then provides comprehensive marketing reports to the business, making sure all the moving parts are maximally aligned and effective.”

With the terrain of the marketing environment shifting and changing so rapidly today, Surefire Social’s services are ideal for small business owners who otherwise find themselves overwhelmed, confused, and frustrated as they try to keep up with new developments. “There are so many companies out there that promise the next big thing to attract traffic to a client’s website, but then can’t deliver,” he remarks. “That’s why empowerment through education is the fundamental cornerstone of what we’re all about. If we can empower business owners to be smarter about the questions they ask when hiring people and about thinking through the implications of a new way of marketing for their organization and workflows, we essentially put their success in their own hands.”

Chris’s passion for helping small businesses build names for themselves is not only professional, but personal.

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Born and raised in Long Island, where his father lived life with loud gusto and his mother ingrained him with solid ethics and moral bearings, he grew up watching his father run an HVAC business that began modestly but evolved into the biggest dealer for computer room air conditioning needs in the region. “My father didn’t necessarily have a grand entrepreneurial plan,” Chris recalls. “He was just open and always interested in new things. He never limited the possibilities of what he could do in life.”

When his father got a call from the Bank of New York, asking about the temperature of computer rooms and saying they needed a company that could come at a moment’s notice if anything went wrong, he was no expert in the burgeoning field. But with the will to learn and the drive to excel, he soon became one. “He was the perfect example of ‘If you can think it, you can do it,’” says Chris. “That’s why, now, I tell my employees to dream big thoughts about what Surefire Social can become. It’s about being free of the limitations we impose on ourselves when we think too narrowly.”

As a boy, Chris worked on his father’s trucks in the summers, helping on assignments or cleaning large condensers in Manhattan. “I’d get so dirty that I’d come home completely black,” he laughs. “I think my dad put me to work like that on purpose to challenge me to figure out what I wanted to be.”

In truth, Chris had always dreamed of becoming a successful businessman, but because his ADHD had led him to believe that academics weren’t his thing, he had compensated by focusing on athletics and his social life instead. But all that changed when he graduated from high school and spent a year at Nassau Community College. “It was a great environment, but I realized that I wasn’t going to end up where I wanted to be if I stayed on that track,” he remembers. “To accomplish the goals I had set for myself, I’d need to get the right education and experience, and going to Clarkson University was my goal. But in order to get there, I’d have to achieve on my own that kind of focus— the kind that years of medication and specialized teaching accomplish today.”

Committed to overcoming his ADHD and dyslexia to catch up in math, Chris’s work ethic kicked in, and he would stay up all night plowing through differential equations homework. After making the Dean’s list both semesters, he transferred into the Clarkson program of his choice, taking classes in engineering and business and cultivating the analytical approach to problem solving that has made him such an innovative and effective presence in the marketing arena. “This discipline has taught me to define a problem, then define the criteria for successfully solving it, then develop alternative ways to solve it, and 84

then evaluate those alternatives in terms of costs, benefits, time, and other dimensions,” he explains. “That mode of operation really became a habit for me, and it’s been a powerful tool in all aspects of life.”

Upon graduating with has Bachelors of Science, Chris had no idea how to get a job and began by walking up and down Madison Avenue, dropping his resume in the reception areas of marketing agencies he came across. With no luck, he read a book about how to land a position and instead sent a series of targeted and personal letters. One of these letters was sent to Young & Rubicam (Y&R), among the largest marketing and communications agencies in the world at the time, explaining that Chris truly believed in the work they were doing and thought he could make a real contribution there. He was offered a job as a media planner, and for a yearly salary of $8,500, he accepted.

Over the next four years, Chris grew exponentially, working on some of the biggest brands in the country. The rewards were not without sacrifice, however. Many days, he would leave for the office at 4:30 in the morning, not to return until 8:30 at night. “To be successful, you have to work really hard,” he puts simply. “There’s no easy way around it. The truth is, lots of people make it look easy, but being successful is being extraordinary, caring enough to push yourself to do things that other people don’t.”

After wrapping up at Y&R and then working several years for Backer & Spielvogel, a legendary advertising agency, Chris decided to launch his first business, Home Video Communications, in 1986. “I had no idea what I was doing,” he laughs. “I wanted to make money on a trend, but I didn’t know how to raise money or work a network.. I had a lot of traction, but I didn’t have the sophistication to understand the politics of starting and running a business.”

Known by friends and business associates alike as being fearless and overly aggressive, Chris managed to do some custom video work for 3M Corporation and Hi-C before almost going bankrupt. His father gave him enough money to rent an apartment in Manhattan for several months, and looking to get his feet back on the ground, he took a job with an early stage place-based media company called POP Radio, which provided satellite delivery of an in-store radio program. While there, he met Susie, a force to be reckoned with in New York advertising and his future wife. He also got stock options for the first time, and when POP Radio was sold, he made his first hit, taking in almost $400,000. “I was also earning between $200,000 and $300,000 a year in sales, and I got to see how you really start a business, from financing to strategic partnerships,” he reflects.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Chris was then hired to run the sports division of Miller Freeman, the U.S. based subsidiary of United Business Media based out of London. The business had one faltering magazine, Sporting Goods Business. At the helm, Chris assessed the situation, noted the framework of their competitors, conducted a competitive analysis of what the business could be, and completely revamped the whole publication. The new product was more fashion focused, printed in an oversized tablet format with beautiful pictures. The magazine was making a profit within two years, and when Miller Freeman bought Pacifica Publications in California, Chris found himself commuting across the country, running the biggest surf and outdoor business lifestyle publications and trade shows in the industry.

Within Miller Freeman, Chris then created Retail Sports Television. After he rolled the company out, however, it was sold to IBB Communications Group, which became LDDS and then WorldCom. When Worldcom later decided to shut down its satellite television services to focus on long distance telephone, Chris was hired by Ted Leonsis to run AOL’s sports division.

When Chris came onboard, AOL was making revenue from time spent on a given site, as opposed to advertising. When the company found itself forced to transition to an unlimited pricing model virtually overnight, it had to figure out how to get content providers to keep providing content, so Chris thought up a new paradigm that came to be known as the Anchor Tenant Concept. “The CEO and the Head of Corporate Development authorized me to test the framework out on several deals, and before I knew it, I was bringing in more revenue than the whole sales force,” he recounts. As a result, Chris was made Senior VP, running business development and helping AOL transition to the new model over the next eight years.

While he was making more money than he’d ever dreamed of, Chris found himself losing the things that were most important to him in the world: his wife, Susie, and his daughter, Georgia. “I felt I had something to prove, and I was so driven to be successful that I lost sight of what was really important to me,” he recalls.

At that time, Chris and Susie attended church each Sunday but were really only going through the motions.

Through church, they were acquaintances with one of those couples who always seem blissfully happy, but as Chris was traveling to multiple cities each week for work and the Marentis’ were considering options with a divorce lawyer, the two couples had fallen out of touch— until the acquaintances invited Chris and Susie out for dinner one night.

Over dinner, Chris’s friend happened to mention that he was starting a Bible study class, and he offered to

plan its meetings around Chris’s schedule so he could attend. Thinking he would only show up for one or two of the discussions, Chris agreed to come, only to find that the more he came to understand God’s word, the more he realized that God’s love was not dependent on his performance. “God loves us despite who we are in this world,” Chris explains. “Through Christ, He made us perfect. I realized that Christ loves me so much even though I am not perfect. He wants me to love others, especially my wife, daughter, friends, and co-workers, with that same grace.

Since that tremendous change of heart, we’ve been doing our best to live a Christ centered life as a family. Knowing that God, who made the universe and everything in it, is the one in control, and not us, takes a lot of pressure off.”

After his time at AOL, and armed with a newfound sense of grace and purpose in the world, Chris retired for several years and then became CEO of Clearspring Technologies, which later became Add This, in 2007. There, he observed a trend in media consumption toward single, individual pieces of media, known as the atomization of the Internet. “I knew that if this trend developed, major players wouldn’t let their content go anywhere unless they had a way to track and measure it, because that’s the only way to monetize it,” Chris reflects. True to his father’s motto, Chris thought it and knew he could do it, so he brought a team onboard to implement the vision.

In less than two years, it became a thriving and marketplace-defining business.

Thanks to the company’s success, however, one of the founders wanted to step back in and take over the CEO reigns, and Chris found himself faced with the stark realization that, unless you’re a founder of an early stage company, it’s not your company. With that, he took a position as President and COO of another location-based company, FortiusOne. “While there, I learned how geo-location was going to be a huge trend in digital marketing,” he remarks. “Viral content and location were becoming very important signals for search and discovery in search algorithms, and I decided to put the those two forces together.”

Chris decided to test his theory and implement a marketing program himself. That meant building websites, social media profiles and sites, and writing and publishing content. “Obama had just become President, and I knew green jobs would be hot, so I decided to see if I could make myself a leading expert in the field,” he recalls.

Without a special passion or knowledge base about green jobs, Chris wrote a book on the subject, created a website, launched a blog, and started doing webinars.

Before long, he was being interviewed by top green job websites, and his book became a top-selling downloadable eBook. “Up to that point, as my career advanced, I Chris Marentis

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had become great at building and leading businesses, but I had gotten out of touch with how the technology worked,” he says. “I didn’t want that to continue, so I was coding websites and doing all of it by hand. It was important to me to do that because, for a CEO to really run a company, you have to have enough expertise to be able to challenge people when they tell you something can’t be done.”

Having proven his theory correct, and having accumulated a wealth of business savoir-faire, Chris was, at age 51, ready to launch the successful business that he had dreamed of leading as a 12-year-old. Founded in 2009 in the basement of his home, Surefire Social now has 28 employees in the U.S. who focus on the intelligence and craft of the business. Their efforts are supplemented by a team of 55 in the Philippines who focus on development, customer service, and search engine optimization, and by a small development team in Ireland. “This structure allows us to deliver hand-crafted solutions at a price point that makes sense for our clients,” Chris says. “Our aspiration is to reinvent local business marketing, and we’re now moving into the enterprise space for national and local marketing, with specialized technology and implementation strategies for national companies looking to support their local dealers.”

In a sense, the renewed opportunity for success that Chris strives to give small business owners each day through Surefire Social is a reflection of the renewed opportunities he sees in Christ, which manifest in his life both professionally and personally each day. “My marriage with Susie, for instance, is now better than we ever

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could have dreamed,” he reflects. “Never am I as happy as when I’m with my wife and daughter. And though I’m not perfect and I fail every day, I know the Maker of the universe has grace for me, my family, and everybody around me. We owe each other grace, and I keep that in mind as I continue to build Surefire Social.”

In advising young people entering the working world today, Chris recognizes his lifelong passion for media and urges others to find theirs. “What do you really love doing?” he asks. “With the first advertisement I read, I was hooked. If you love what you do, you’ll be successful because you’ll spend a disproportionate amount of time on it.”

Chris knows that an exceptional level of commitment is the key to success because he saw it in his father, who went to work each day with the poise of someone who knows they’re better than anyone else they could compete with in that market. Chris couldn’t have followed in his father’s exact footsteps because he didn’t have that same passion for HVAC contracting, but he follows in his father’s spirit each day by going to work with that same poise. “God gifted me with the ability to connect the dots of technology and media solutions, to the point that I could go anywhere and talk to anyone about it,” he says.

“And I have this passion for what I do, in part, because of him. I know how important new business generation is to a business owner. In an industry that tends to keep things faceless, I take it personally. Because that face is my father’s face, and I know without a doubt that, because I think there’s something I can do for them, there is.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Robert W. Massie, IV Because I Can Robert started working at age eleven, not because he needed to, but because he could. “I heard of this great thing called a newspaper route,” he remembers today. “I loved the idea of accomplishing something and getting paid for it. But you had to be twelve, which bothered me at first, but then I decided it didn’t matter. I badgered the district manager, and he finally agreed to let me do it as long as my parents gave the okay.”

To the eleven-year-old-boy, working that paper route was the coolest thing in the world. He was doing something no one else his age was doing simply because it was possible. For five years, he delivered the paper each morning and each afternoon. “From that time onward, I’ve done everything that way,” he remarks. “I got part time jobs that were different just because I could.”

True to form, Robert was a DJ on the radio at age 15. It was a job that required some skill and could be done in any city, so he learned the techniques, the voice, and the diction. Through college, he DJ’ed on six different radio stations while he also pursued an opportunity as a bank teller and ended up managing his own branch. At seventeen, he became an interstate truck driver traversing the East Coast, when the minimum age for that position was supposed to be 19.

“I always do things a little earlier, a little differently, and maybe not exactly the way they were intended to be done,” he says. “I wanted the job that was hard to get that not everybody could do to prove to myself that I could.” Now the cofounder, President, and owner of BrightStar Care of Fairfax, Robert is still driven by the same force that has led him to success over the years.

He does things because he can, measuring himself and each day by what he accomplishes and focusing on moving forward every step of the way.

While always present, that driving force took a new turn when Robert was in college and came face-toface with the reality that the opportunity and ability he has always relied on can be fleeting. Normally a hearty 22-year-old student athlete, he was feeling under the

weather and went to the health center. Luckily, the cardiologist at the clinic that day noticed he had more than the flu and sent him to UVa for emergency surgery. He had been stricken with endocarditis, a deadly virus that eats the heart valve, and the odds were not good. “That day, I saw the bleakest prognosis and the lowest moment of my life,” he remembers. “I was convinced that when I went to sleep that night, I would never wake up.”

Miraculously, Robert did wake up, though not to the same life he had known the day before. His house on campus had burned down, and his sister had totaled his car. He had lost his home, his vehicle, and his competitive swimming career, but he was alive. “When I woke up and began rehabilitation, my ‘do things because I can’ philosophy was taken to a new level because there had been a moment where I really didn’t think I’d be here to do them,” he explains. “Even more in the wake of that experience, I try to go a little beyond what others think I can do, and what I think I can do. I don’t fear things anymore—being poor, being sick. I feel that anything I do is worth doing, and I want to test limits and boundaries.”

Committed to redefining his own abilities, Robert graduated in 1984 and began competing in Iron Man triathlons, even with an artificial heart valve and a pacemaker. For over two decades, he went full steam ahead in that fashion so that, when he was pushed to the brink again, he was ready.

It happened on his way home from a business trip in India in 2006. Robert stopped in Edinburgh, Scotland and was in a taxi from the airport to his hotel when he was hit with a sensation he knew all too well.

“You never forget the feeling,” he remarks. “I knew it was endocarditis. The odds of catching it twice are infinitesimal, but it was unmistakable.” He was taken to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where doctors confirmed that a severe case of the disease was attacking his artificial valve. After a lengthy 14-hour surgery, during which they told his wife he was dead before the surgeon decided to try one more time, Robert was brought back.

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Within two days of surgery, he was walking again, and eight months later, he ran a marathon in Las Vegas because, as always, he just wanted to see if he could. “I had hit rock bottom before, and I knew a bit about the path back up, so I was able to take it faster that time,” he says. “And reflecting on those brushes with death, I feel that they were freeing. I can do or try anything I want, and if I fail, that’s okay.”

It was this liberating confidence that allowed Robert to change the course of his professional path completely, leaving corporate America at the pinnacle of his career, with more responsibility and a higher salary than he’d ever had before, to launch his own business.

Finding the ethics of the company he was working for too incompatible with what he felt was right, he made the decision to walk away from his lucrative position to start something of his own.

“I wanted something that was truly sustainable,” he says. “I knew that if I went back into consulting, it would be about me building a book of business around my capabilities and skill set, when what I really wanted was to start something with staying power—something that would last long after I’m gone.” With this scope in mind, he decided to take a macro perspective of America’s unmet needs, and realized that the single biggest driver of demand is healthcare and the aging population. “In the next hundred years, 78 million baby boomers will redefine what it means to age in this country,” Robert explains. “There will then be a brief lull before an even larger population of 86 million millennials will have the chance to redefine it again. I wanted to be part of those redefinitions.”

BrightStar proved to be the perfect avenue to accomplish this goal. In 2001, an Illinois accountant named Shelly Sun and her husband, JD, opened the home care agency, which expanded to several agencies before she decided to franchise in 2005. Since then, BrighStar has become the most rapidly growing franchise in home healthcare, with over 250 agencies.

The franchise defines its business model as private duty homecare, meaning clients pay out of pocket or through insurance companies, as opposed to the model reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid, which is generally restricted to skilled, in-home care under a doctor’s orders for a relatively brief period of time.

“If your family member has dementia and needs to stay at home and can’t drive, but the family is working, Medicare doesn’t cover it,” Robert explains. “The private duty model is much broader and can provide all the services required. Our staff focuses on seeing fewer patients in a day and spending more time with each of 88

them. What we really want to do is care for people. We want to provide services over the long term to families and help make more possible for them.”

When Robert decided to walk away from corporate America, home care is the last business he thought he’d walk into. He assumed he’d become the CSO of a high tech company, or start something in that field.

But home care put him in the perfect position to address a coming crisis, bringing together cutting edge technology, intellectual property, innovation, and business strategy. His wife, Kerry, is BrightStar of Fairfax’s Co-founder and Director of Operations. Together, the Massies navigate the complicated maze of hiring W-2 employee nurses, LPNs, and CNAs to provide care to a set of clientele that sorely needs this assistance. So far, it seems that BrightStar has successfully developed a reputation of delivering that assistance with unparalleled professionalism and dedication.

Robert and Kerry bought the franchise rights to the Northern Virginia area in July of 2012 while living in Chicago. They moved back home to Virginia, found a place to house the business and generated their first revenue in late November. They plan to open between 4 and 6 offices to serve Fairfax, Mclean, Vienna, Manassas, Gainesville, Springfield, Loudon, and Leesburg areas. Aiming to build continuity with both clients and caregivers so they can provide the best care possible, the Massies offer paid time off and employ over 30 caregivers today. “It’s a very personal business,” Robert affirms.

“You get to know the families. It matters that you’re there on a personal level, and that’s very rewarding.”

Breaking ground and blazing new trails is also a pastime rooted deeply in Robert’s ancestry. His family immigrated to America in 1678 and settled in New Kent County in Virginia before moving into the interior. When the Revolutionary War was won, the country was so new that it didn’t have money to pay its officers for their service so, instead, they awarded land grants.

“The officers and their families went out and literally staked their claims, and Major General Thomas Massie had two land grants,” Robert describes. “One was established in Nelson County, Virginia, and is now known as Massie’s Mill, Virginia. The other was somewhere ‘out there,’ in what’s now Ohio.” Nathanial Massie, who became a surveyor, staked the land for the families’ land grants and received 10 percent of the land he staked as a fee. He staked out Chillicothe, Ohio and then went back to Washington and petitioned to award the area territory status. Ohio was mapped, and Nathaniel was named its first provisional governor. He then laid out the town of Columbus and became its first mayor.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Several centuries later, Robert was born to a farmer from Lynchburg, Virginia, who woke up at 6:00 AM every morning to run the family quarry business.

His mother had been an economics genius who turned down a Harvard professorship to marry Robert Massie III, who was frugal, conservative, and steady after growing up on a farm during the Great Depression and fighting in World War II and Korea. “Personal responsibility is everything to him,” Robert says. “I grew up knowing that if I wanted something to get done, I had to do it myself.”

That’s why, when Robert wanted to be a pilot at age 14, he became one of the youngest kids in the state of Virginia to get glider lessons. It’s also why he was committed to playing football and tried out for the team each year, even though he wasn’t very good.

As a boy, Robert was relatively small and the brunt of all the jokes in school. “I was the kid with the glasses and the bangs who wanted to be on the football team but didn’t have the skills yet,” he remarks. “I was teased a lot and didn’t take it well. I was always near the top of the class in grades, which only made it worse. I cried a lot and was a bit of a mess.” Despite the constant ridicule, he continued to lead with his chin, trying out for the football team each year until, finally, one day in ninth grade, amidst an episode of teasing by a group of boys before school, he finally snapped.

The young man who had always been scared to death of physical confrontation as a kid suddenly threw a punch for the first time in his life, and then another, and then another. “I was suspended from school, but something had changed,” Robert remembers. “Over the next couple of days, I hunted down a couple of my ‘tormenters’ and picked a fight with each one of them. It was the wrong thing to do, but it was wildly freeing, and I suddenly wasn’t afraid anymore. For me, that was a defining moment.”

After that turning point, Robert flourished. By the time he enrolled in Washington & Lee for college, he was social and athletic. Good grades began to matter to him, and he soon got them. After college, he moved to D.C. and took a position in the finance division of a department store, going through training and becoming the new accounts manager for the credit card division of May Company. “They gave me a lot of responsibility early on, and I had a blast,” Robert recalls. “I was managing people and discovering the transformative power of technology, doing things that hadn’t been done before.” Robert and his team found that, if they applied mathematical models to people’s credit history, they could predict whether they were a good credit

risk, essentially inventing the retail credit score in 1984.

People from stores across the chain could call Robert’s credit department, which had created an interface into the CBI Credit Bureau reports. With that information and the application, the model could make a decision, assign a limit, and create an account within three minutes. “We called it ‘instant credit.’ Technology and modeling and business coming together really excited me, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” Robert remarks.

After five years of bringing increasing capability to the division, Robert transitioned over to the merchandising side of the business, where new technologies like the UPC barcodes were being applied. Now, customers could be checked out at the register electronically, where the exact size, style, and color of the purchased items was instantly recorded. Stock could be replenished automatically and much more efficiently, and dynamic ordering systems were developed. The work was invigorating, but after four years, Robert decided he had gone as far as he wanted to go in the department store world. With that, he returned to the University of Maryland to earn his MBA while also working full-time and fathering his first child.

Upon graduating in 1992, Robert was hired by Deloitte Consulting, LLC as a senior consultant and promptly immersed in the consulting world. “Not only could I still do all the things I loved about business innovation and technology, but now I could do them with an array of companies and project teams of the smartest people I had ever met,” Robert remarks. “I realized that, through the power of coordination, we could organize a team of people to do much more together than any of us could do individually, and I learned how to lead a team constructively. My leadership style evolved into that of the player coach, believing in the model of leading by example and that you have to adapt your leadership style to the people that you lead. Different people need different things from a leader to be happy, excel, and help achieve the goals of the group.”

Robert was there for eight years, moving up through the ranks until he was offered a chance at partnership in 1999. He thought long and hard about the offer, but the more he looked into what a partner career really entailed, the more he noticed that many senior partners seemed to lose their passion. “Being a partner seemed limiting to me- in that it defined you from that point forward,” he observes. “I would likely be that partner in that industry and in that practice until I retired. The money was good, but ultimately I decided that I couldn’t do it.”

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for smart consultants who knew technology to come serve on their leadership teams, and Robert accepted a position with a small company called Oblix, based in San Mateo, California. As part of their leadership team, he learned the world of venture capital and how to build a $25 million company. Commuting back and forth across the country took its toll, however, so Robert accepted a position on the leadership team of a Midwest financial software company with rapid growth and big name clients, moving the Massie family to Chicago.

Within four months, however, it became painfully apparent to Robert that his new position was not a good or sustainable fit. Broken leadership led the company to close its doors, and Robert suddenly found himself out of a job. Fortunately, a friend who had been a partner at Deloitte and left for another California company had just joined IBM when it bought the company. IBM was poised to open a new frontier in software, and though Robert thought the 300,000-employee company was rather big, he decided to give it a try. They had a bold strategic plan with excellent margins, so he joined IBM in 2002 as a software executive on the sales side and rose through the ranks to Vice President over the next ten years. “It was a phenomenal ride, and we were able to act like a small business inside a big company, which engendered a sincere camaraderie in the team,” Robert recalls. “We took Sam Palmisano’s vision to make software the driving force of the company and essentially helped remake IBM from a hardware company into a software company.”

Robert ran several large worldwide organizations as he rose through the ranks, gaining invaluable experience and thoroughly enjoying the work. Yet he reached a plateau as he grew into an executive role and began to feel that the job he had set out to do was largely done.

He was offered a position in hardware, but there was no mission or vision to attract him to that cause, so he began to look for the next big thing.

That’s when another company called looking for someone to run their worldwide sales team. Robert accepted the position, but within a year, in the aftermath of turmoil caused by a large acquisition and exacerbated by a difficult culture, Robert concluded that it was time to step out on his own. “The way they ran the business and the way they thought about life was different from how I wanted to approach things,” he says. “And after traveling the world, I was ready to come home to Virginia, where our family lands are and where my father’s corporation still operates. At that point, I wanted to find something meaningful—something that would challenge me.”

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Robert has found all that in BrightStar, where he aims to bring on skilled and experienced people, help them understand the vision of the company, and give them what they need to enact that vision. And through it all, his wife Kerry has served as a constant sounding board and unwavering source of support. “She’s always trusted that, if we sit down to talk something through and decide it’s a risk worth taking, we should do it,” he reflects. “She’s probably one of the most rational people I’ve ever met, always cool, calm, collected, and able to cut through the emotion and clutter to identify the things that make a decision meaningful. Her opinion really matters to me.”

In advising young entrepreneurs entering the working world today, Robert echoes the advice his father gave to him. “Find something you like to do and do that; then the rest will take care of itself,” he says. “If you find something you enjoy doing, it will work for you because we tend to like what we’re reasonably good at. What plays to our strengths and feeds us, we enjoy and work hard for. So if you do what you enjoy, you are going to be successful—both because you are good at it, and because you will work hard at it. You’ll find a way to make it your own, and that is absolutely everything.

There really is nothing worse than making a million dollars a year at a job that you hate.”

In stretching his own abilities and making BrightStar the best it can be, Robert is now licensed as a Certified Senior Advisor, equipped to help seniors get the support they need across all dimensions of their life. What’s more, BrightStar of Fairfax is earning its Joint Commission accreditation, the “Good Housekeeping” of health care accreditations that very few agencies pursue due to its rigorous standards. Robert also works with the American Heart Association and is involved in a number of charitable events. “To some degree, I’m alive today because of the work they’ve done, so I work to show people the great strides that are taking place in heart health and how they’re happening,” he says. “Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., but it can be prevented and treated effectively, and supporting the American Heart Association is a good complement to my BrightStar efforts.

Working toward these goals is more than my just my work, it’s my life and my responsibility.”

Echoing this sense of responsibility is a framed certificate that hangs in Robert’s home and bears the original signatures of George Washington and Henry Knox. The date on the parchment is 1778, and it signifies the induction of Major General Thomas Massie, Robert’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, into the

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Society of the Cincinnati. Washington brought his generals together after the Revolutionary War to create a society that would work for the betterment of the country, and centuries later, Robert continues that mission, seeing the document as a reminder that the work of his family should continue to cross the generations. “We’ve got so many things to accomplish and responsibilities to uphold,” he affirms. “I grew up in a family where I knew one day, I’d be a member of the society, and that it represents both an honor and a responsibility. The certificate represents, to me, the work I have yet to do. I’ve raised a family and had a business career, but I still feel I haven’t done all that I can do. At the end, what will I

say I’ve accomplished and done? Will it matter? I’ve got work to do yet.”

People often say, make no small plans. That’s why Robert lives his life thinking about what he’d like to see happen in 100 years that he can start today. With a keen cognizance of the historical arc that connects past, present, and future, he does all that he can because he can.

“Echoing Jimmy Buffett’s tour slogan from a few years ago,” he says, “this is the Year of Still Here. And not just of still being here, but of thriving and having fun and doing some good—of beating the odds and doing all that I can.”

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Marshall Micheals, III Leading through Legacy On the back of Marshall Micheals’ pocket watch are four names with four birthdays: his grandfather, the original Marshall Micheals; his father, the second Marshall Micheals; his name, Marshall Micheals III; and his son, Marshall Micheals IV. More than a record of the watch’s owners through time, the inscriptions symbolize a line of legacy that has not been broken for generations, and that the third Marshall Micheals understood the moment he was given the heirloom by his own father. “He told me it was my job to carry the family forward,” he says. “My grandfather had been a coal miner, coming from very little money but providing a comfortable upbringing for his family. My father did a little better, earning an MBA and owning his own lime plant. He told me that when I got older, it didn’t matter what I did, as long as I was pushing the family forward with integrity and hard work.”

For a young child, such a sweeping sense of responsibility can be daunting, but Marshall came to understand the pocket watch as a reminder that real mission is being an agent of change and showing true compassion to others along the way. “My dad taught me to always treat everyone the same, whether they are a receptionist, a garbage collector, or a CEO,” he says. “Everyone plays a part in the bigger picture, and you can never treat someone differently because of their station in life.”

Today, Marshall has done his part to move the Micheals family legacy forward by founding Corporate Network Services (CNS), an IT consulting firm based in Maryland that specializes in managed services and technology.

He started the company in his basement in Montgomery Village in 1993, with nothing more than a business plan to offer low voltage cabling and a $10,000 investment from his father to help get him started. “I remember training my first employee on the first day at my dining room table, and we had to talk over the sound of workers in the basement laying carpet for the office,” he recalls with a laugh. In 1994, the office moved into a larger basement in another residence as they made do with what they had until they had earned enough to move into a professional space.

The company experienced immediate, sustained success for its first decade, morphing into an IT management service and offering remote IT support—a rare trade at the time. The company, however, was derailed in 2003 by the suffering economy, bringing to light that their heavy focus on low voltage cabling was in fact costing them significant amounts of money. “We had grown from the marketing method of mouth-to-mouth referrals to bid-andchase, but we didn’t have the people we needed to take the next step,” he recalls. “I kept telling the banks and the accountant that it was going to get better next month, and then the next month, but eventually they just had to tell me I needed to face the reality that it wasn’t going to get better.”

The only solution to save the company was to downsize from forty to twenty employees, halving their revenue and focusing solely on IT consulting, application development, and federal contracts for medical IT integration.

The company has since come back from the brink, experiencing sustained success and a steady growth rate as it’s climbed back to its original number of 48 employees.

“I like to think it’s because we operate on that legacy of integrity passed down by my father and grandfather,” Marshall says. “When I can, I negotiate and play with our clients’ invoices to help them. If they’re doing well, we have them pay more upfront. If they’re in their slow season, we understand that and let them pay less. We have the ability to help our clients, and we believe in doing so.”

Recently, CNS launched an in-house program called Community Counts, in which their employees join in activities that reach out in some way. Some have chosen to work in soup kitchens, for instance, while others have opted to help with local charity events. This is just one manifestation of Marshall’s efforts to cultivate the company culture toward meaningful initiatives and an enjoyable, family-like office environment—efforts that have won CNS a Best Place to Work Award every year since 2006.

“I really feel honored by that award because that comes solely from employee feedback,” he says. “There’s no way a company can secure that award other than making their employees happy, which means the world to me.”

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Marshall was born in Akron, Ohio, where he and his two older sisters lived for a short period before multiple moves that led to his family settling down in Vermilion, Ohio. His father, an engineer, had been struggling to find work, and the constant moves had been his attempt to stay ahead of layoffs plaguing his industry. When the family arrived in Vermilion, his father found work at a lime plant owned by U.S. Steel. After several years, U.S. Steel wanted to sell the plant, and his father, along with four other partners, purchased it. “He was always very private with his money, but he recently showed me the balance sheets from those early days, and I was blown away by how resourceful he had been to get that plant up and running,” Marshall explains. “He’d had enough moving around, so he resigned his suit and tie for steal toed work boots and provided for his family with brute force.”

While his father worked for most of the day, Marshall’s mother stayed home with the children. His parents had an exceptionally happy marriage, working well together to make the best of what they had and always putting the family first. “My father worked extremely hard, but he always made time for us,” Marshall recalls. “He would do anything for his family. I remember standing in pouring rain waiting for him to change a flat tire in the driveway so that we could go on an Indian Guides camping trip together. He’s just that kind of a guy.” His mother eventually worked for a bank when the children were older, putting all her savings away to pay for their college tuition.

By the time the Micheals family moved to Vermilion, Marshall was just entering the fifth grade and had learned from his various moves what to expect from his classmates. “By that time I had figured out how the little groups of kids developed because the pattern was always the same at every school I went to: there was the group you met first that was always trying to test you, and then the group you met later who actually became your friends,” he recalls. He had come to anticipate the more aggressive children coming to him early on, taunting him and throwing fists, but with each new school, he was able to patiently wait out their games and recognize real friends when they appeared. “It was tough when I was a kid, but I think the moving around was a good thing because it pushed me out of my comfort zone. In business and in life, I’m a big believer in being uncomfortable because it helps you grow.

You’ll be better for it,” he says.

When Marshall was thirteen, he landed his first job as a dishwasher at the restaurant where his sister worked as a cook. He worked two summers there before leaving to work as a stock boy in a liquor store, unloading boxes from trucks and keeping the store organized. His boss was a Vietnam veteran and quite a character, grabbing bottles 94

off the racks for customers with war-burned hands and tossing them across the store to Marshall at the cash register, who did his best to keep the liquor from smashing on the ground. “It was like a circus,” he recalls. “Bottles were flying all over the place. He taught me how to catch bottles with my feet to keep them from breaking. Only once did I throw a bottle back at him, and he gave me an earful for it.”

While working at the liquor store constantly kept him on his toes, Marshall recalls the many instances he took the time to make sure he was honoring his father’s advice to always treat all people equally. The nature of the store brought customers from all walks of life through its doors, from professionals looking to throw a party, to alcoholics showing up at 10:00 AM with shaking hands to get their next fix. “We once had a woman come in and joke around about robbing the place. She seemed a little strange, and we couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not,” he recalls. “My boss just calmly looked at me, pointed under the counter, and asked if I had cleaned the shotgun that day. I said yes, even though we only had straws behind the counter. Anything could come through that door—it was a kaleidoscope of humanity, and the experience taught me how to deal with each and every person.”

Marshall worked hard in school but found his real passion lay in playing basketball, and he played on the team until his sophomore year of high school. “We have this weird basketball gene in my family, and I managed to catch it,” he laughs. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the confidence to really pursue the sport and didn’t try out my junior year, which I really regretted for most of my young adult life. That taught me a lot about the consequences of decisions and their lasting impact.”

Toward the end of high school, Marshall’s parents bought a TI-99 computer that hooked up to the television, and he was instantly hooked to the world of technology. “I’d sit in the dining room and play on that thing for hours,” he recalls. “Back then, if you wanted to play a game, you had to write it first, and then your only hope of saving it was to load it onto a cassette, with only a 50/50 chance that you’d get it back.”

After graduating high school, Marshall attended Ohio University, where he further pursued his interest in computers by earning a degree in Computer Science.

“I wanted to make the most money I could by doing the least amount of work,” he jokes. Many students within his field were being recruited by the Secret Service for their skills in cyber security, so Marshall began looking for opportunities in Washington, DC. Shortly after graduating, he was recruited to work for a company called Falcon Microsystems. “I received a better offer from a company in Dayton, but I felt like Falcon would

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

provide me with more mentorship starting out my career,” he recalls.

Marshall started his career at Falcon working as a network engineer, focusing primarily on installing networks and programs on clients’ computers. Shortly into his time with the company, however, the sales department recognized his charisma and began dragging him to sales meetings to serve as the technical expert when speaking with clients. “My favorite sales rep would talk to the clients, and then kick me under the table when it was my turn to talk about the technical details,” he laughs. “She taught me how to communicate with clients, as well as all the strategy you need to help your customer make a sound and informed decision.”

In 1991, Marshall left for a new company to serve as the Vice President of Network Services. While there, he made his first significant sale—a deal re-cabling a company’s infrastructure. He worked up the cost of the installation on the back of a ‘While You Were Out’ pink memo, which Marshall has had framed and hanging in his office ever since. He stayed with the company for another two years, but ultimately felt he was not accomplishing the work he felt destined to do. He began imagining what his ideal company might look like, and realized that, at the age of 28, he had created a viable business model that he could put into action.

With his business plan in mind, Marshall turned to his father for financial help to set his fledgling company in motion. “It was very hard for me to ask for that much help from him, but he gave me the money without blinking an eye,” Marshall recalls. “I wanted to be able to do it on my own, but my parents really believed in me. His only question was whether I wanted the check made out to me or to the future company, and I’m extremely appreciative for the unwavering support they gave.”

Nearly twenty years later, CNS has truly hit its stride—a stride that has helped it weather storms that have crumbled many other companies. And while Marshall credits the integrity and chemistry of his team for this success, he also stresses the value he has found in seeking advice from the two peer groups that he has been a member of for the past four years. Initially, he resisted the idea, having turned down an invitation to join a premiere group because he felt too embarrassed to share his profit and loss statements. A few years later, however, he began hearing about more and more groups and about how helpful the advice of other business professionals could be, so he decided to join a group that seemed to fit his personality. “I had come to the point where I was stubbornly pulling levers at my company and trying to figure everything out on my own,” he explains. “But after joining a peer group,

I was able to consult a sounding board and finally stop reinventing the wheel. It really helped me feel in control of my company, rather than hanging onto its tail and seeing where it went.”

Since utilizing these sounding boards, Marshall has seen a significant improvement within the company, as well as in his own style of leadership. Never one to micromanage, he strives to surround himself and his company with trustworthy people who accomplish the job they were hired to do. When he does interfere, he tries to do so by helping his employees make the most of their career. CNS’s current President, for example, started out at his neighbor, having given up her previous job at QVC to focus on her young children. When her kids started school, Marshall began pursuing her to work on his team, promising her any schedule she needed to keep her family the priority. “Once she finally came on board, it took me some adjusting to sit back and pass the reigns over to her completely,” he recalls. “I have the instinct to try and do everything on my own, but now I send everyone her way so she can do her job and I can do mine.”

Now that he has the peer groups in his life to guide him through tough business decisions, Marshall only wishes he had found mentor figures earlier in his journey with CNS. Because he was only 28 when he first launched the company, he had to learn most business lessons through painful experience. “My advice to young business people and entrepreneurs is to slow down and find that mentor, or at least take a job where you can learn from the people around you,” he explains. “If I had put more focus on that, I think I could have avoided a lot of bumps in the road early on with the company.”

Today, Marshall has an extension of his office set up in his basement to allow him to work from home from time to time, bringing back memories of the basements where the company spent its infancy. “Working from home can be a challenge, but I make sure I stay on task so I don’t come off as lazy to my kids,” he says. “I’m not motivated by money. I’m much more inspired to work hard when I think about carrying on my parents’ legacy and passing that torch on to my kids, and when I think about what it means to be a good role model for them.”

Marshall has already begun the process of passing the torch on to his son, Marshall Micheals IV, who is currently studying business at Virginia Tech. The youngest Marshall, who is next in line to receive the pocket watch, has already expressed mild interest in joining his father at CNS—perhaps his own way of pushing the family forward. Marshall often told his young son about the message his father had told him, until one day, when his son was in 7th grade, he began crying at the dinner table.

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“He said he didn’t know how he was going to start his own company, and it just cracked me up,” Marshall laughs. “I explained to him and my other two children, Niko and Georgia, that it’s not about the pressure to succeed or make a lot of money. Rather, it’s about building off of what the last generation left for you and living a life of

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integrity, hard work, and ethical soundness. Whether they become a janitor, a schoolteacher, a CEO, or something in between, all they need to do is focus on being the best they can be. It’s about making something of your life that you and your loved ones can be proud of. To me, that’s the best legacy anyone can leave.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Peter J. Miller Breaking Ground Peter Miller is a lover of firsts. He is the man who is eager to be first on stage to present an idea. He is the man who’s tapped to build a project from the ground up. He is a pioneer. But being first is never easy. Today, as a Regional CEO for Vibra Healthcare, Peter still remembers vividly a defining moment in his career that began as a first, evolved into a crisis, but then ultimately served as a propelling force that launched him into the rest of his life.

Peter was the Director of Rehabilitation at a Catholic hospital at the time, and for a while, everything was clicking. Following a string of successes, he was presented with an opportunity to do what he loved: develop a new project and bring it to launch. He would build a specialty hospital within a hospital. “Being first isn’t necessarily about having the most brilliant ideas,” he explains. “It’s about seeing the opportunity in an idea and being the first one out there to put that idea into practice. It’s about encountering the unexpected and taming a raw environment.”

Once the new project was up and running, Peter was offered what he had yearned for ever since he entered the industry straight out of a Masters in Health Care Administration program at Texas State University: to become the CEO and administrator of a hospital. “At 42 years old,” Peter says, “I finally achieved my heart’s desire to become the CEO of a small hospital. And at first, I had great success. I was free to keep in motion the principles I had implemented in building the hospital in the first place.” A year after becoming CEO, however, he witnessed the buyout of the company that operated the hospital. And new ownership brought a new governing philosophy.

“The management style flipped from bottom-up to top-down,” Peter recalls. “It was a challenge, and I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I did best when I was allowed to maneuver and when I could express my creativity in solving problems. When the hospital was first sold, my gut had told me that the new owner might not be a good fit for me. But I had a family and young children, and in the interest of stability, I was determined to make the transition work.”

Despite this optimism, the culture clash that ensued did not go well, and Peter suddenly found himself in a moment of crisis—he lost his job. Having brought his wife and children to a new city, the situation wasn’t just stressful, but almost panic-inducing. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” Peter recalls. “It was frightening. But in getting over that brief scare, I learned something very important about perspective. Today, as always, I take my work very seriously. I’m passionate and I believe I do real, lasting good in my profession. But I also don’t beat myself up when things don’t go the way they’re supposed to. I do the best job I can and treat people fairly. I don’t get too serious about my own ego. Because along with striving for success and being on the fast track, you need to carry the realization that the world is not going to end if you don’t get that big project done—particularly if you’ve done your best. The worst thing that can happen to you professionally is not really that bad. You still have your family and health. You still have who you are.”

Coming out on the other side of this experience equipped Peter for the successes that would follow—successes that would build his career as an operator and leader with the pioneering spirit that has always been a hallmark of his character. Serving as a Regional CEO for Vibra Healthcare is the most recent installment in that career, allowing him to lead facilities that are truly unique in the healthcare space.

“Many of Vibra’s hospitals are unique in that they’re called long term acute care hospitals,” Peter explains. “Unlike your typical acute care hospital, which admits patients for a relatively short stay, long term acute care hospitals focus on patients who stay around 25 days or more. We work with these patients who have diseases like diabetes or hypertension. Or maybe they’re on a ventilator or need dialysis, and we address those needs and keep them from being re-admitted to the hospital.”

In this specialty field of healthcare, Peter faces a new frontier—a complex regulatory environment, increasing competition, and shifting demographics. “As health care dollars compress,” he says, “acute care hospitals are looking to move their patients out sooner. Technology is changing.

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The relationship between government and healthcare is rapidly evolving. It’s an interesting time, and we’re excited to be at the forefront of this mercurial industry.”

If there’s any man that relishes the challenge of a new environment, it’s Peter. Next to the external challenges of a changing healthcare world, there are the internal dynamics playing out behind the scenes of any hospital. “Healthcare is fascinating,” Peter says. “It’s diverse and dynamic, and I think that’s why I like it. There are no unimportant jobs in a hospital” Vibra Healthcare is a privately traded healthcare firm based in Pennsylvania that in April of 2013 acquired 15 long term acute care hospitals containing over 1,000 licensed hospital beds, one inpatient rehabilitation hospital with 44 beds, and one skilled nursing facility with 135 beds. The acquisition brings Vibra Healthcare’s total specialty hospital and outpatient rehabilitation count to 92, which operate across 18 states and employ over 5,000 people in the post-acute arena. Founded in 2004 by Brad Hollinger, Steve Marcus, Don Yoder, Clint Feegan, and Tom Durkin, the organization’s partners and founders have more than a century of combined hospital experience in the specialty’s niche.

Peter had spent four years in his previous position as the CEO of Specialty Hospital of Washington—Hadley, and as the Senior VP of Specialty Hospitals of America, when a recruiter called him about a Resource CEO position for Vibra. In that capacity, he would help fill in around the country while the company placed permanent CEOs within its ranks. “That concept appealed to my wanderlust,” he laughs. When he went in to interview, however, Vibra’s leadership team was impressed by his experience in multistate operations and by his performance on a psychological tool called the Predictive Index, which reported him as a great fit. With that, they offered him the Regional CEO role instead, beginning with two acquisitions in Charleston, South Carolina and Richmond, Virginia.

Peter is among the first regional CEOs Vibra Healthcare hired from outside the company, entrusting him to guide the helm in initiating these new acquisitions into the corporate culture. “Like at Hadley, I really felt at home at Vibra Healthcare facilities the minute I walked in,” he says. “I could feel it in my gut. The same could be said going back to my earlier days working for Noland Health. When I walk into a hospital and it feels warm and welcoming, I know I’m in the right place.”

For someone like Peter who places a premium on engagement as the integrity of a project is built from the ground up, having a direct connection to the operations of his hospitals is important. “I supervise my direct reports, and they supervise their team leaders,” he says, “but I am 98

intent on being directly involved in building the hospital’s culture. Central to that culture is a focus on safety. I’ve learned that it is too easy for good, well-meaning people to allow things to slip through the cracks, even if there is a system in place to prevent that. With this in mind, it’s vital to have a culture where someone will stand up and say, ‘something is not right here.’ We want employees who will speak up, and we want a culture of people who hold each other accountable in a non-punitive way.”

Peter compares his system to one that can be found in the aerospace industry. “That industry is a leader when it comes to the no-blame reporting systems that promote accountability and innovation,” he explains. “It’s one of the reasons airline travel is so safe. When there is a near-miss, it’s immediately reported and investigated. They won’t necessarily fire the people who made a mistake—they just want to know what happened. I like to call it a just culture, and it’s a philosophy I hope to implement here at Vibra.”

Peter’s exposure to the aerospace industry can be traced to his father, who worked as an electrical engineer during the space race in the 1960s. As Peter has done with his own family, his father moved their family several times through his childhood across the southwest United States, from California to Texas. The oldest of six children, Peter was an inquisitive child, and his parents encouraged him to appreciate music and the arts. His strong passion for sports, as well, could only be one-upped by his mother.

“She cracks my brother and me up,” Peter smiles. “She loves pretty much every sport, and she’ll chat us up about the point spread. Our dad loves Arkansas football and the Cowboys, but mom is crazy about the Utah Utes, Peyton Manning, baseball, and everything else.”

Although he is now a very different person, Peter describes his father’s influence on him as profound.

“When I was younger, I idolized him,” Peter says. “Then, in the 1960s and 70s, I almost went 180 degrees in a youthful rebellion, rejecting everything he stood for. If he was a Republican, I was a Democrat. If he had barely half a beer on Saturday nights, then I would drink. If he was Catholic, I was agnostic. But as I got older, I found myself in more and more ways like him. The things about both my parents that drove me crazy are now who I am. Maybe that’s why they drove me so crazy.”

After time away from the Catholic Church as a younger man, Peter now goes every Sunday, and it’s an integral part of his identity. He also fondly recalls his involvement in the Boy Scouts of America and is a strong proponent of both youth and professional organizations.

Now, as a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Peter carries a prestigious credential that signifies board certification in healthcare management. He has

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four children, and his wife, Denise, also works in healthcare in Northern Virginia as a psychiatric liaison. “Denise is an extraordinary person,” Peter says, “and I learn from her every day.”

His achievements have also been the products of incredible mentorship throughout the years—people who were willing to invest their time and energy in Peter as he sought to break ground of his own. “Any successful businessman knows that, in addition to his own ambition and hard work, there was a whole infrastructure of people that made his success possible,” Peter says. “In my life, it has not always been people whom I’ve sought out. It’s been people I’ve crossed paths with who turned out to be role models.

I like people genuinely, and it was many of the individuals I worked with whom I admired that made strong impressions on me.”

Looking back, Peter is most proud of the many hospital and healthcare structures he has been able to open

all over the country throughout his career. “These facilities and programs have served people, and they’ve created jobs,” he says. “Perhaps most importantly, however, they provide a vital service that has made people’s lives better.”

And looking forward, in advising young people entering the working world today and in reflecting upon the prospects of Vibra Healthcare, Peter sees great opportunity in the health care industry as a whole. “Despite the fact that the economy is tough and students today are graduating with considerable debt, I strongly feel that it’s time for bright, smart people with nothing to lose to jump in head first and revolutionize the way we structure healthcare in this country,” he affirms. “As health service revenue is declining and costs are going up, the opportunities are immense. All of this is coming to a head. We need to be smarter and faster. We need to break ground, and Vibra Healthcare stands with shovel in hand.”

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Vernand Morency The “It” Factor Vernand Morency’s third grade teacher looked over his paper and shook her head. The class had been asked to write down what they wanted to be when they grew up, and he had proudly affirmed he was destined to be a professional baseball and football player. “It’s a nice dream, but the odds are so against you,” she told him. “Pick something else that’s more realistic; otherwise, I’ll have to give you an F.” Young Vernand thought for a minute. He looked around at his classmates, who were writing about becoming doctors or lawyers, and felt an anger bubble up inside him that he had never felt before. Even though his teacher had been trying to protect him from potential disappointments in the future, he just could not agree with her that his dream was impossible. “That’s when that ‘It’ came out in me that I didn’t know I had,” Vernand recalls. “I became so driven, so determined, with no backup plan. I went to my uncle and asked him how I could get bigger and stronger.

From then on, I would call him to work out, rather than the other way around. I would wake up at 3:00 AM to run around the block before school. People thought I was crazy, but to be successful, you need to be borderline insane.”

Today, Vernand’s assignment is framed and hanging proudly on his wall, complete with its bright red “F”. Having just entered his thirties, he is a retired baseball player for the Colorado Rockies, as well as a retired football player for the Green Bay Packers, and currently serves as the founder and CEO of Galleon Point Properties, a company specializing in the acquisition of properties for affordable housing and community development initiatives.

Vernand inherited his entrepreneurial spirit and real estate wisdom from his parents, who both immigrated to America from Haiti in the late 1970s before they met. They traveled over separately, each in a small boat with roughly 250 people on board. “Many people had to stay under the engine, where there was no air, and death was a common occurrence on those voyages,” Vernand says of the twoweek long journey. “I don’t know if I could have done it, but it was an opportunity for a better life for them, and

ultimately for my sisters and me.” His mother and father each arrived penniless in South Florida, where they were introduced to one another through the Haitian community and married shortly thereafter. Between them, the couple worked four jobs, slowly starting to save up a small cushion. “In Haiti, there was nothing, especially after they shut down the sugar plant,” Vernand explains. “There was nothing to work towards, so my parents were happy to repair shoes and tailor clothing here.”

By the time Vernand and his four sisters were born, both parents had moved up in the working world, choosing strategic jobs. His father worked at a full-service hotel and was able to bring home leftover food from the hotel’s restaurant. That way, the family always had good food to eat. Similarly, his mother worked as a nurse, so there was never a shortage of medicine. The family started to save up a small sum of money, which they began using to purchase houses, since real estate in Florida was so inexpensive at that time. “They would put 10 percent down on a house, and then convert it into a duplex,” Vernand says. “That way, the tenant paid their mortgage, and if they couldn’t pay, they put food on our table. My parents may not have gone to Harvard, but they had that ‘It’—that willingness to go out, give it all they had, and succeed.”

By the age of five, Vernand was helping with the family business by putting up walls and roofing houses.

His parents urged him to focus on his education, so he was not allowed to work anywhere else but at the family business. This hardly bothered young Vernand, until he noticed how his neighbor, who worked for the Miami Herald, had a nice car and wore nice clothing. “I asked him for a job, figuring I could sneak out in the mornings to deliver newspapers before my parents woke up so they would never know I was gone,” he recalls with a smile. “I got away with it for the first morning, but when I got home on the second day, my dad was waiting for me, and I got quite a spanking. They wanted me to do well in school, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was tired in class.”

Despite his parents’ strong push for education,

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Vernand began to fall in love with sports by the third grade. That was the age he began noticing the ladies, and it didn’t take long for Vernand to figure out that all the girls would line up on the edge of the schoolyard to watch the boys play football. His attraction to sports thus began as a result of peer influence, but the ever-determined Vernand decided that if he was going to participate in them, he would be the best.

At the time, his parents didn’t understand sports, so he turned to his uncle for guidance, who signed him up for teams and trained him. “My uncle would tell me to do 1,000 sit-ups and pushups just to keep me busy, thinking I wouldn’t actually do them all,” he recalls. “But I’d break them up into sets and do them during TV commercials. I’d hang off chairs from the kitchen and do dips, despite my mother’s objections. I think my uncle saw my body start to change quickly, so he really started taking me seriously.”

By the time Vernand graduated from high school, he was an All-American athlete in both baseball and football, so he could have easily gone into either sport.

His parents, who were slowly catching on to how talented their son was, were fully convinced when a professional talent scout appeared at their door during his senior year.

Vernand was drafted to play for the Colorado Rockies as soon as he graduated, and played as a centerfielder from 1998 to 2002. He also moved to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where he was surrounded by some of the best athletes in the world. “I got a chance to pick their brains, workout with them, and test my skills with them,” he says.

“I was seventeen years old with access to this incredible wealth of knowledge, which I know gave me an upper hand over my teammates.”

One of the most influential athletes he met was Gary Sheffield, who taught him the power of leveraging. This came in handy during his second year at IMG Academy, when money became a factor for the first time in his decision-making. “I evaluated the athletes around me and noticed they were making much more than I was, despite my talent on the field,” he notes. “I knew I had leverage, because I could always go play football in college or pursue my education, which, would ultimately lead me to a bigger salary. My friends were getting paid well, but I wasn’t, so I knew I had to do something.” Vernand turned to Sheffield for advice, who told him to send out a highlight tape and let his talent advocate for him. His roommate at the time was Matt Holliday, whose father was the head baseball coach for Oklahoma State University. Matt agreed to send a highlight tape of Vernand to his father, which launched a downpour of offers from colleges for him to play for them. Finally, Vernand was in a position to 102

negotiate, and in 2002, he enrolled at Oklahoma State University to play football on his own terms.

Vernand notes that his time at OSU was distinguished by learning how big a business football really was.

“As soon as I got to Stillwater, I told Les Miles I needed a year or two with the team, and then I was leaving to play professionally,” he says. “I was cocky but confident in my game. During my first game, I had two touchdowns, but then I didn’t play for the rest of the year. That’s when I realized the game was bigger than me. It’s a real machine, a real business, and everyone has their own interests at heart. That realization opened up my eyes quickly.”

Vernand played at OSU for three years before being drafted by the Houston Texans in 2005. He was with the Texans for a year and a half and was then traded to the Green Bay Packers, where he finished out his NFL career.

Looking back, he feels every game was memorable, as each one afforded him the profoundly rewarding opportunity to do what he loved. “I had my linemen and my receivers believing in me, so I knew they would do their job and I could do mine,” he recalls with a smile.

In 2006, while playing for the NFL, Vernand participated in a syndicate group led by T. Boone Pickens that developed the $250 million Boone Pickens stadium at OSU. “Pickens was going to be flipping the coin to start the game, but beforehand, he and I were able to talk briefly in the locker room,” Vernand recalls. “He flipped the coin, I shook his hand, and we’ve been friends ever since. It was brief, but his message was powerful.”

In 2007 and 2008, Vernand was selected to participate in the prestigious NFL Business Management and Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Through this experience, he began to see that while his athletic career was successful in the moment, he wanted to find something that would continue to sustain him for years to come. He was one of the best running backs in the league, but he was able to talk business with T. Boone Pickens in a way that most of his peers could not. It was a tough decision, but he soon realized it was time to draw his NFL career to a close and follow his inner drive to the next big thing, whatever “it” would be.

Vernand’s decision to retire at a young age is a notable factor that truly distinguishes him from his fellow professional athletes. “I had always wanted to reach the highest level in my sports, and I was able to do that by going pro,” he says. “The only step higher would have been to become a Hall of Famer, but I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to invest more years of beating my body up for that. That reality hit me when I saw older Hall of Famers barely able to move or speak. They are the greatest of all

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time, but I felt I wanted to do things to cultivate great relationships so I could be sustainable and not have to come back after twenty or thirty years to sign autographs as a way of living.”

By the time Vernand left the NFL, he had used his many connections through the organization to expand his network, thereby positioning himself perfectly for the creation of his own business. During his time at OSU, he had taken a note from his parents and used some of his earnings to start acquiring assets. “My mom had told me that I could put my money in the bank and get a small amount of return on it, or I could put it in a piece of property and get 8 percent back,” he explains of his early investments.

He put these assets under the umbrella of his company, which he made official when he was drafted by the Houston Texans, and expanded after his experience at Wharton, where he received his Executive MBA. Today, Galleon Point Properties focuses on affordable housing—a cause that is near to Vernand’s heart, in light of his parents’ experiences as immigrants who came to America with nothing. He refers to the process as an 80/20 deal, where 80 percent of the units are market-rate apartments, and 20 percent are designated as affordable housing with rent restrictions. The company acquires housing in D+ locations, which usually include areas near major highways and at the fringes of the roughest parts of the inner city. From there, the company stimulates change within the communities and allows the area to advance to a C+ level or higher, ultimately transforming societies and raising the quality of living for hundreds of families. “We take areas that no one wants to be involved in and grow them into successful communities,” he says. “I’m so passionate about it because it allows individuals a better opportunity to become entrepreneurs themselves, since they have more capital to allocate as they see fit and to support their children’s dreams.”

For all his success, he credits his parents first and

foremost, who taught him a strong work ethic and instilled in him what he refers to as that “It” factor, which is the willingness to run through a brick wall and die trying to reach that goal. He also credits his strong faith, which has always been a guiding force in his life. Like the importance of education, his parents also taught Vernand and his sisters the transformational quality of believing in a higher power. When the children found Catholicism was not sitting as well with them as it did for their parents, they were permitted to seek out the church that was right for them. They chose to attend a Baptist Church, so every Sunday, a bus picked up the five Morency children, while their parents attended their own service.

When advising young entrepreneurs entering the business world, Vernand passes on a lesson he learned from his business mentor, Peter Lettermen, a real estate guru who once asserted that a person is only as powerful as their black book. “The sense of entitlement that permeates society today needs to go out the window,” he comments. “As an entrepreneur, you need to do whatever it takes to get things going and not feel that anything is beneath you. It’s hard to get people to believe in you, but once you pass that challenge, everything else will fall into place.”

More so than beating the odds and becoming a professional baseball and football player, Vernand’s story is about overcoming that voice that tells someone their dream is impossible. It’s about taking a force of discouragement and transforming it into a force of motivation through a belief in one’s own abilities and potential—a potential that continues to unfold as old goals are accomplished and new ones take form. “I’m hoping my work will help people realize that they are better than whatever circumstance they’re in now,” he says. “So many people feel defeated by life, and think they’re capped out. I used to think I was too, until I met the right people. And if I can do it, anyone can.”

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Mehrdad Negahban All About Communication The world remembers Howard Hughes as an eccentric entrepreneur who eventually descended into madness—a legacy tempered by his undying commitment to the pursuit of his visions, however improbable or derided.

Extreme though his story may have been, Mehrdad Negahban, CTO and co-founder of beamSmart, sees a flicker of that kind of entrepreneurial obsession in all true innovators. “To be honest, I think all entrepreneurs have an element of that extremeness to them because of the pain and suffering they go through and the sacrifices they have to make,” he explains. “It’s amazing. At the end of the day, most entrepreneurs realize there is a high level of risk involved in what they do. Like Hughes, they often go to the point of destroying everything, including their lives and their finances, to make something happen.” Along with his partner, Allen Kay, Mehrdad has spent years pursuing his own vision of a smarter, simpler, more secure mobile experience, and today, beamSmart is ready to make that vision a reality.

The idea that would become beamSmart gestated and evolved over the course of the last decade. Around 2001, Mehrdad was already aware that hand-held devices would soon marry cellular technology with the capabilities of a computer. At that time, he envisioned a phone loaded with sensors which he refers to as “the remote control of everyone’s life.” Along with internet and GPS capabilities, this phone would open doors and anticipate anything you needed, connecting you with local resources and offering you deals. At the time, however, broadband wireless was simply not developed enough to accommodate such a concept. With the advent of Cloud Technology, however, Mehrdad and Allen Kay began to tweak their original concept and work out how best to connect the right information with the people who need it.

“Cloud technology is a source of infinite information and knowledge,” Mehrdad explains. “It’s this unlimited database that beamSmart aims to simplify, process and deliver.” With this goal in mind, the company has built a platform on which clients can build applications, and those applications in turn connect users swiftly and

accurately to the information they seek. Connecting job seekers with available jobs, mobile workers with management tools, and even people in emergency situations with appropriate assistance are all within beamSmart’s purview.

While the concept may sound similar to, say, a site like Facebook or LinkedIn, their approach to information and their use of “machine learning” to personalize the mobile experience is what vastly differentiates them from other businesses. Social network services use machine learning to profile users, assessing them for demographics and preferences and then using that profile to deliver marketing content. beamSmart takes a different and more secure approach, asking users to drop their information and knowledge into the cloud, and then using that information to assist the user. “The whole purpose of this kind of platform is to make people smarter and safer,” says Neghaban. “Our motto is, ‘We offer personalized mobility and cloud communication to simplify your life.’”

Currently, the company is in pre-sale, a step Mehrdad took in order to gain validation from the market before bringing on an external management team. Several projects are in the pipeline, including a contract with UNESCO for an application that will serve youth in developing countries, and another helping the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to build a digitally safe campus.

Through the application, local youth are able to locate resources nearby and prepare themselves for the job market. It connects potential employers, government workers, mentors and youth in a smart database. Another application concerns the evolution of 9-1-1. “The next generation of emergency response will instantly connect users to the nearest Public Safety Answering Point, and has the potential to cut response time from minutes down to seconds,” Mehrdad explains. “The future is all about personalized connectivity, and beamSmart is making it happen.”

Mehrdad has spent years working to realize this vision, and that drive, he believes, comes from within. “If you are influenced by outside forces, at some point you will give up,” he says. “The pressure of building a company

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is so hard and painful for you and your family. There must be something within you that keeps you going. Everything may be against you, but if you can hang in there and stay true to your mission, at some point, things will begin to fall into place. People will begin to follow your direction.

That’s the sign of a leader.” That inner drive and desire to do something different—to make something for one’s self rather than for an employer—is what led Mehrdad to leave a perfectly comfortable, well-regarded and well-paying position to pursue entrepreneurship.

The road to that watershed decision was long and winding. Born in Tehran, Mehrdad was fascinated by mathematics as a boy and dreamed of becoming a physicist. He lived with his father, an accountant for the thenShah, and mother, a teacher, as well as his older brother and older sister, until he left Iran in 1974. At 16 years old, he began working toward his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland, and, in a mere 2 and a half years of coursework, completed a double major in math and electronics. Even having taken off an interim year, he was only 20 years old when he began pursuing a Master’s Degree at UCLA. In California, he became further fascinated with the world of electronics and completed all the work, as well as a dissertation for a Ph.D. in the subject from the University of California, Irvine. Like many Iranian ex-patriots, he had come to the states intending to return to his home country with an America degree to improve conditions at home. But in 1979, the Iranian Revolution changed those plans, and it was instead his family who relocated and followed him to the states.

Although his parents had been well-off in Iran, Mehrdad had to finance much of his own education after the fall of the Shah, and did so with assistantships and tutoring jobs. By 1981, he had his first full-time job, got his green card, and obtained U.S. residency. Over the next few years, he found great success in the electronics industry, obtaining patents, speaking at conferences, publishing work, and pioneering the integration of digital and analog technology.

It was an exciting time to work in the quickly evolving tech world, and Mehrdad earned his share of prestige in the field, but after almost 17 years in the industry, he found that his success wasn’t enough. “I was one of the best low-power integrated circuit designers,” he recalls. “My publications and patents are proof of that. One day, venture capitalists approached me and said they would finance me to build hearing aids, but I rejected that offer. In retrospect that may have been a mistake, but it was always my dream to start my own company. I was working, publishing, and making good money, but to me, that wasn’t satisfaction. I wanted to build something of my own. I want to do some106

thing for me.” With that, in 1997, Mehrdad launched his first independent venture, Valence Semiconductor.

The company went through two phases. The first, between 1997 and 1999, boasted profits and success. “We built a solid communication company and were working on fundamental technologies,” he remembers. “We had very good partners and exceptional customers.” Then, in 1999, Mehrdad evolved the business into a second company, for which significant funds needed to be raised. Unfortunately, like so many other start-ups at the time, 9/11 proved to be an economic catastrophe from which the business could not recover. The tech bubble burst, and although he and his team struggled through until 2003, the company ultimately succumbed to the fatal blow.

Although 9/11 certainly could not have been anticipated, Mehrdad is quick to point out his own mistakes— mistakes he now views as valuable lessons to be carried forward. “If I had had an experienced management team pre-9/11 to tell me, “This is a bubble, and you are a strong company, so take advantage of the financing that’s available and raise money so you can survive tough times,’ I think we would have survived. We had solid technology, and the market was perfect. We just lacked experience— something we have gained since then.”

Today, Mehrdad does not call himself the CEO of beamSmart for that very reason. He is eager to entrust that position to a proven commodity. “To be fair to myself and the company, we’ve got to bring someone in that operates the company and has the proven experience for this business,” he emphasizes. “I know my vision is right, and I know we have the right product for the right market, so we then turned our focus on bringing in a seasoned management team. I won’t make the same mistake twice.

I believe that, in the business world, some are blessed with the gift of setting vision, while others are operators. Running a business is like driving a car—you need both a gas pedal and brake. The trick to success is balancing those two components and encouraging mutual respect.”

The notion of respect is a fundamental building block of Mehrdad’s philosophy and belief system.

His spirituality, a central focus of his life, focuses on a sense of interconnectedness and love, and he attempts to exemplify this spirituality through his choices and contributions to the world. “To me, love is the clean-burning fuel within you that drives you,” he explains. “When I say love, I don’t just mean loving a person, but also loving your society. It’s the energy that’s around us and the force that’s within us. Love is the fuel that compels us forward, and I feel that people without love or passion, whether they know it or not, don’t have any purpose in life.”

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It’s the same premise that underlies the concept of beamSmart—it’s all about connection.

With this philosophy in mind, Mehrdad does not focus on material success so much as the kinds of success that live beyond death. “There are many, many rich people nobody is going to respect,” he points out. “But there are many, many spiritual people who will leave their stamp.

Whether it’s Louis Armstrong who creates beautiful music, or Martin Luther King who sacrificed his life for freedom, or Albert Einstein, all of these people had some level of spirituality. It’s a big part of living, prompting us to think about why we’re a part of the world, how we can contribute to making it better.” Along with Einstein, whom Mehrdad admires as much for his philosophical musings as for his scientific mind, Mehrdad was also strongly influenced by Rumi, the renowned 13thcentury Persian poet, and John F. Kennedy.

Naturally, this spirituality and emphasis on love has

led Mehrdad to contribute significant time to his community, volunteering with youth 20 hours a week for more than ten years. He is also thrilled to imagine the potential for humanitarian impact his developing applications carry, yet despite all his successes and contributions to the tech world, he doesn’t hesitate when asked what he is proudest of: “My kids,” he affirms. “They have followed in my footsteps to achieve their own success, and it is an honor to see them be a force for positive change in the world.”

To young people entering the business world today, Mehrdad’s advice is simple. “Go where your passion is, and follow your vision,” he affirms. “Passion is something you can really believe in. It’s something you can go all in on. It’s something you can dedicate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, of your life to, if need be.” Like so many dedicated entrepreneurs before him, Mehrdad has spent years doing just that—years that not only guarantee beamSmart’s success, but also promote a better future for everyone.

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Barbara Newhouse Relationships Matter in Leadership Barbara Newhouse was only four years old when her father, Alfred, survived a terrible car accident, but she remembers vividly the tremendous shock wave of the incident that would change her family forever. He would never be able to work again, and he was plagued with violent outbursts that resulted from a serious brain injury.

With twelve children to feed and constant caregiving needed, Barb’s mother found she needed help with the cost of the medication that helped to mitigate the outbursts, so she went to the Department of Health Services for assistance. “I’ll never forget seeing a man there who was like a god to me, who said our family made 99 cents too much to qualify for assistance with the cost of the medication,” Barb recalls. “For our family, that meant we needed to make a choice. We could either pay for the medications, or have food on the table. If we didn’t pay for the medication, we ran the risk of having violence in the house.”

Growing up on a farm just north of a small Iowa town and in a complicated blended family situation that sometimes meant her mother was caring for twelve children in addition to her disabled husband, Barb became involved in the caregiving of her father by the age of five, helping him relearn how to do even the most basic tasks. “My mom was my hero because she never missed a beat,” Barb recalls. “She’d go to work at 11 at night as a nurse’s aide until 7 AM and come home to make sure us kids did our chores, had breakfast, and got on the school bus. She made sure dad was bathed and taken care of and that we all had dinner. She had a hard life, and she’s an angel that stays with me.”

Barb may have been young at the time, but she knew in her heart there was something deeply wrong with a system that would force a family to choose between food and medicine. Yet watching her mom work such grueling hours, she doesn’t believe in entitlement, either. “If you can work, you should work, but there are times when bad things happen to good, hardworking people, and we need systems in place to make sure those situations can be handled well,” she remarks today. “That’s why I grew passionate about systemic change. I knew early on that everything

I did, starting with my first job at age fourteen washing dishes at a local restaurant, would be about saying, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this.’” Now the CEO of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Arthritis Foundation, her life’s work continues to look at those systems through which we handle our world and one another as people, to find and enact that better way.

Systemic change often begins with awareness followed by education, and the Arthritis Foundation is committed to dispelling common misconceptions around the condition. “It has to do with inflammation of the joints, but it actually includes over 100 different diseases,” Barb explains. “People often believe arthritis is simply a condition of age, yet two-thirds of the arthritis patients are under the age of 65, and some 300,000 children across the country are diagnosed with juvenile arthritis each year.”

The Arthritis Foundation’s midAtlantic region includes Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, and North and South Carolina, and its goals are aligned with the organization’s nine other regions and its national office. Preaching the motto, “motion is lotion,” Barb and her team aim to provide good exercise opportunities for people with arthritis by teaching proper techniques for aquatics, tai chi, and other sports. They work with partners to combat obesity, which puts significant pressure on joints. They also closely monitor research breakthroughs across diseases. “A breakthrough in any one disease is tremendously helpful in others,” she affirms.

Beyond these considerations, the Arthritis Foundation focuses on strong legislative advocacy. With 40 employees and a budget between $6 and $7 million, the MidAtlantic region also has a $23 million endowment that has allowed them to fund special projects for their national office. A few years ago, they decided to give the national organization additional funds to kick off an osteoarthritis biomarker initiative with the National Institutes of Health, and today, they’re investing in the creation of a consumer engagement initiative across the country that will connect the public with professional advice and information in new, immediate, and innovative ways.

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Leading systemic change in this way takes a balance between strength and gentleness that Barb has come to understand and embody through the menagerie of experiences she began accumulating through watching her mother. “My mother wore the same perfume every single day that I can remember,” she says. “She possessed a gentle spirit and a great strength that she passed on to me, and both have been absolutely vital along my path through life.”

While they first came in handy in assuming caregiving responsibilities for her father, strength and grace helped Barb even more in school, where she found herself labeled neither beautiful nor well-off. “I was always the girl from the wrong side of the tracks because we were so poor,” she recalls. Yet Barb was set apart from her peers in other, more substantive ways. In kindergarten, she was the only friend of a young boy named Chris, a boy with Down Syndrome who nobody else took the time to talk to. Her fifth grade teacher, Ms. Halibut, took a particularly strong interest in her, teaching her that inward beauty is far more important than outward beauty.

When Barb wasn’t caring for her father, mowing the lawn, or doing other chores, she was an avid reader, which helped to fine-tune her visionary mind. After working as a dish washer in a restaurant and watching her mother work tirelessly for minimal pay in caregiving, she knew she wanted more from her life and resolved to go to college and find a way to address the broken systems she had witnessed through her short life. “My mom hadn’t finished high school, and because of that, it was important to her that we had the opportunity to pursue college,” she remarks. “She would talk to us about not putting ourselves in a position where we had to settle.”

With that, Barb went on to attend a small Catholic college in Iowa called Briar Cliff with a little help from a state tuition grant. To cover the rest of the cost and her expenses, she checked groceries and worked in the school’s financial aid office. Overall the experience was good, but she never forgot the day one of the Deans at the college told her she would never have the success she wanted because she didn’t have what it took. “He never defined ‘what it took,’ but if I was determined to make something of myself already, that comment just lit another fire under me,” she said. “He was going to be dead wrong.”

When she first got to college, Barb thought she wanted to go into social work where she’d interact one-on-one with individuals, but she quickly realized she didn’t have the temperament for that when she interned at a night hotline at a YMCA. A man named Tom would call every time she worked, saying he drank too much and was going to commit suicide. One night, eager get to the root of 110

the systemic problem, Barb broke from the hotline’s protocol and actually called him out on his bluff, essentially challenging him to break from his cycle of empty threats and instead do something to actually change his life for the better. At a hockey game years later, Barb and her husband actually ran into Tom, who had gotten help for his drinking and had found his niche as a telemarketer. “He told us he was alive because of me,” she remembers. “I felt great about that, but I think it’s good that he was my first and last social work case.”

Indeed, Barb’s manager at the hotline recognized that she would be better in addressing systems, which helped shift Barb in a new direction. With that in mind, when she graduated from college in only three years, she accepted a position running an alternative sentencing program for minor offenders under the scope of a Voluntary Action Center. “In the early 1980s, there was a big push to refocus minor offenders through volunteer work, and these centers popped up all over the country to match them with volunteer jobs,” she recounts.

That center was acquired by United Way, and suddenly, Barb found herself 20 years old, working for United Way, and attending her first board meeting. Afterward, her boss, a woman, called her into her office and instructed her to wear a blazer to all board meetings going forward because she was too distracting. After the following month’s board meeting, she was instructed that she was no longer allowed to smile in the meetings, as that was too distracting. Shortly thereafter, her boss called her in and fired her.

When Barb got fired that day, a man named Joe, who was the labor liaison between the unions and United Way, knew that Barb’s boss had just made a huge mistake.

IBP, a major meat packing company in the area, had just gone on strike, and all of the union business agents decided that Barb would be their poster child. “They filed an action with the NLRB in D.C. on my behalf,” she remembers. “Being so young and not really understanding what was going on around me, I was a pawn in their bigger game. There was all this media attention on me, but I was just worried about how I was going to pay my bills!”

Thankfully, Barb went to work for the JC Penney Company running the switchboard until she was suddenly reinstated in her former job, with both sides of the scuffle safely in mediation. Finally with enough stability to learn and grow, she found she excelled at marketing, communications, and fundraising, staffing the organization’s chairman as they waited for a new executive to come onboard and learning more about nonprofit leadership in the process.

After this experience, she decided to try her skills

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

out in the “for profit” world, becoming a mall Marketing Director for a couple years. In that role she was charged with working with vendors on marketing plans that would bring people into their shops. The challenge was, however, that bringing people into the shops didn’t always equate to a sale. “It felt like it was compromising my values,” she remembers. “It felt empty and wrong to me, and I knew I wanted to go back into the nonprofit space.”

With that, Barb decided to take a position with the American Cancer Society, which took her to California, where her family had lived briefly before moving to Iowa.

She then transitioned over to the Alzheimer’s Association, where she spent 16 years developing an incredibly nuanced understanding of systems change and the ramifications for capacity building for nonprofits. Much of that time was spent in Chicago, working as a change agent at the national level. It was during this time that, at a wedding, she happened to run into the old dean who had told her she’d never been successful. “He apologized for saying that to me,” she remembers, “and I told him I hoped he had learned that it was never okay to say something like that to a young person.”

At the Alzheimer’s Association, Barb facilitated a strategic plan, oversaw nonprofit mergers, and ended that period of her professional life as a VP of Field Relations before accepting the position of COO of the Autism Society. Ultimately, however, she came across the opportunity at the Arthritis Foundation and knew it was a place where she could promote the kind of systemic change she had been oriented toward all her life. “I was attracted by the fact that I’d be able to create a new organizational culture for the Mid-Atlantic Region,” she explains. “I came in and ripped the Band-Aid off right away, getting rid of all the chapters and instituting a matrix management system. We now have our CFO in Richmond, our COO in Charlotte, and three Senior Vice Presidents covering fundraising, mission, and communications in Bethesda and Charlotte.

It’s truly a matrix system that prevents haves and havenots. The region has a single revenue budget and a single expense budget, and that has created a new sense of cohesion and unity.”

Through her extensive career, Barb’s efforts have never been about making money. “It’s been about supporting my family and surrounding myself with the people who will allow me to live the life I want to live and teach my son the values I grew up with,” she affirms. Her efforts have also been about giving back to the people and causes that fill her with passion, and that began with giving back to her mother. After so many years of struggle and caregiving, Alfred passed away, and Barb and her siblings pulled together to make sure their mother had the kind of life she

had so clearly earned. They convinced her to move into a low-income independent living setting and invested the money from the sale of the house so she could rely on that for her ordinary needs. “Anything beyond those ordinary needs that was more about fun, we gave her,” Barb says.

“We were able to pay for her to go to Hawaii, for instance.

But she was always most excited about simply going to the grocery store and getting the things she could never have before. It was wonderful for us to be able to pay her back in that way because we knew that, if she had had the opportunities gave us, she would have been one successful lady. She had a true hidden savvy.”

Just as important as paying it back, however, is paying it forward. On a broader scale, this has meant serving on a number of Chamber of Commerce boards, which earned her the Bethesda Chevy Chase Chamber’s chairman’s leadership award. On an individual scale, however, this has meant helping people along the way. One of Barb’s employees, Alpha, used to hand out newspapers every morning at the Bethesda metro stop. Barb would always politely decline but say hello nonetheless, and one day, he asked if he could give her his resume. She read it on the train, and it turned out he had a solid skill set for an open position in their finance department. Alpha was born in Senegal and attended college in Minnesota, and today, he has his permanent green card and is poised to take his citizenship exam, and his job at the Foundation played a considerable role in getting to this point.

As well, Barb recently drove down to Atlanta to meet with a young lady who was out of work, ultimately getting her a position working on a project. “In both instances, I was asked what they could do to repay me,” Barb says. “But I just said, this is about paying it forward. Someday down the road, you’ll meet someone who needs help in a way you needed help. This is how our efforts to improve lives can echo on forever, long after we’re gone.”

In advising young people entering the working world today, Barb reminds us that not everything is a given. “Even if you’re smart, you still have a lot to learn, so don’t expect to walk into a job and start at the top,” she says. “You need to earn things. Young people come in with a very unrealistic view of the work environment, feeling they should walk in with a certain salary and title. Don’t tell your boss how good you are; just be that good. Because if you have to tell me how good you are, you probably aren’t as good as you think you are.”

This is an integral tenet not only to followership, but also to leadership, and Barb herself was given this advice by a CEO when she was trying to find her footing as a leader. Growing up with a fierce independence and selfreliance, she used to approach leadership thinking she alBarbara Newhouse

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ways had to be the one pulling the whole cart herself. In time, she thought it might be better to try pushing the cart instead, but soon realized that that was more about managing direction than leading. “That’s when I learned that good leadership is really about relying on one another,” she said. “It’s about getting out front and being that good, which attracts other good people to join you and share the weight. Leadership is not about telling people what to do; it’s about providing a vision and a framework in which people can succeed.”

With her finger consistently to the pulse of systemic

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change, measuring how far we’ve come as a society and how far we have to go, Barb’s leadership is really about creating a framework in which all people can succeed, including the homeless people she sees on the street. “That could be anyone,” she says. “It could have been me, but I had a mother who wasn’t going to let that happen. That is a gift I strive to pay forward every day. I do what I do because I believe that somebody has to be looking at doing the right thing for people, and through broad systemic change, we can maximize the scale of that sacred effort.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Andrew Nussbaum Accident and Choice Andrew Nussbaum cringed as he listened to his coworker stumble over her words and give the client incorrect information over the computer help hotline. They had both been hired by Prentice Hall Publishing to answer the questions of lawyers and business people trying to navigate the new online database of tax law information and letter rulings—Andrew for his extensive knowledge on the emerging field of computer science, and his coworker, a recent law school graduate, to navigate and interpret the legal content. It was clear to Andrew, however, that she had no idea how to use the database, and thus often gave incorrect or incomplete answers to the clients.

To compensate, Andrew frequently took over her clients, using his ability to build search queries and narrow down information to figure out what the customer needed. While he found it frustrating, he rarely worried himself over it—until the day he realized she was making 50 percent more than he was. “I went to my boss, who was a good friend of mine, but he said his hands were tied. Given her background and law degree, he had to pay her that much,” Andrew recalls. “I told him he had two months to match my pay with hers, or I was leaving.”

Because the size of the raise he requested was essentially unheard of, his boss came to him a month later offering 12 percent more, but Andrew turned it down. Instead, he left the company for a job on Wall Street with Integrated Resources. “I loved that job at Prentice Hall. It was one of the best jobs I ever had, and the one I went to after was terrible, so I really learned the hard way that money should never be the priority,” he says. “I really believe it’s much better to enjoy what you’re doing rather than to focus on money. As it turns out, though, that career move led to my getting an MBA, bringing me to where I am today.

I’m starting to realize that my career is the result of many happy accidents, so while I regretted leaving Prentice Hall back then, I’m so grateful I did now, because I probably would have never left otherwise. If I hadn’t, I would have never met my wife, or started my own company.”

Today, at the tail end of many other fortunate ac-

cidents, Andrew is cofounder and Managing Partner of AAJ Interactive Technologies (AAJ), a full-service professional staffing and recruiting firm based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in technology and media services while also encompassing financial, professional, federal, and non-profit organization services. The company was started in 1997 when Andrew and several coworkers from Bell Atlantic broke off to actualize their vision of an ideal consulting firm. At first they focused on project-based software development for the media industry, but they quickly found a demand for staffing and recruiting, which fit in seamlessly with their business model.

While the company is constantly fluctuating in size and workload, it typically employs between 30 and 40 people at any given time, with an average length of engagement with a client lasting around six months. “I try to keep our clients local because I sincerely believe that our focus on the D.C. area is what makes us different and better than our competition,” Andrew affirms.

Andrew was born and raised in the Bronx. His mother was an employee for the state, while his stepfather did typesetting for stocks and bonds. While his parents did well in their careers, Andrew was always motivated to find creative ways to make money for himself. “When I was too young to work, I would go up and down the streets digging cars out of the snow after storms,” he recalls. “They had huge plow trucks that would push the snow from the street against the parked cars, so we would make a fortune helping people get out in time for work.”

Growing up in the Bronx, Andrew had very little idea of what life outside of the city was like. “I had a hard time imagining a neighborhood that didn’t have three groceries, four bakeries, your school, and the subway all right down the street,” he laughs. He and his brother lived with their mother and stepfather on the second floor of a building with a broken elevator and only one small air conditioner, which was kept in the master bedroom. “On nights that it was just too unbearably hot, my brother and I would sleep on the floor of my mother’s bedroom under

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that little air conditioning unit. It was an interesting way to grow up.”

Andrew spent most of his childhood on the move.

During school vacations, he would visit his father, an insurance broker in Long Island, and play as many sports as he could, including hockey and speed skating. When he turned ten, his mother began encouraging him to take piano. A teacher in Yonkers schooled him in the basics, and he then switched to a more contemporary teacher in junior high. “She taught me about music theory, and we began playing Simon and Garfunkel,” he recalls. “Really, she began teaching me how to fake it. If I knew the melody, I could intuitively create the chords and the rest just fell into place. I began thinking I’d probably become a musician one day.”

Because his musical talent was compelling, Andrew auditioned for the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. “When they tested you, they were less concerned with how good you were at a particular instrument and more interested in your potential,” he comments. “They had you tap out rhythms and sing back notes to get the full trajectory of what you were capable of.” While his grades had been less than perfect, he made it into the school thanks to his musical foundation, where he switched from the piano to the trombone so he could play in the orchestra. “I absolutely loved going to school there, but it was very eye opening to suddenly be in a high school full of students who were just as talented, if not more so, than I was,” he says. “I remember watching one girl tune her violin by ear and realizing that I’d never have the same drive for music that she did.”

With that realization, he decided to put aside his dream of being a musician and instead pursue a business degree. As he began interviewing with schools in 1980, he decided he wanted to supplement his business degree with computer classes. “The PC had yet to come out, but computers were becoming more and more a staple in business, and I had the foresight to know they would quickly become the future,” he notes. When he visited the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, he asked the advisor how he could combine business and computers, which she thought would be difficult to do. “Back in those days, you could only take computer classes if you were a Computer Science major, because the school had a limited amount of computer time,” he says. “What really sold me on the school, however, was how quickly the advisor was willing to work out a solution for me. She looked over the schedule of classes and told me that I could enroll as a Computer Science major and Business minor so that I could get my computer classes in, and then switch to a Business major after a year or two.”

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Thus, in the fall of 1981, he enrolled at Plattsburgh on the track she had advised him on; however, after two years of Computer Science classes, Andrew found he was too invested to switch majors. “1981 was when the PC came out and the real information age started. I was programming on huge box computers until they moved to terminals, but even then, we were limited to just an hour a day on the computer,” he laughs. “Today, the guys I work with are constantly compiling their work a thousand times a day, so it’s been fascinating to see how technology has evolved.”

Shortly after graduating from college, Andrew landed a job with Prentice Hall Publishing. “Finding a job was a little tricky at first because most companies didn’t understand what I did,” he recalls. “Computers were so new that I was one of the first to graduate with my type of degree. Previously, everyone in my line of study had electrical engineering degrees.” At the time, Prentice Hall was putting their tax law information and private letter rulings databases online so that customers could look up information on their PCs by using a modem to dial into the system, rather than having to search through stacks of books. It was an extremely innovative concept at the time, and Andrew was tasked with helping the attorneys and accountants figure out how to access the information over a hotline.

Not long after Andrew transitioned over to Wall Street to work as a database developer for Integrated Resources, the stock market crashed, putting the company out of business. “I hadn’t planned on going to graduate school, but I decided I wanted to work in a university setting, so I began applying for jobs at schools,” he says.

Andrew landed an interview with Syracuse University, where the head of the Business Department made it clear they desperately wanted him for his computer knowledge; yet, because of his extensive experience, the university could not afford to hire him in the traditional sense. “The Dean decided to make a deal with me,” Andrew recalls. “He said they would accept me into the MBA program and pay all my tuition, while also giving me a living stipend, if I agreed to work twenty hours a week under an assistantship status. I saw it as a huge win-win for both of us, so I enrolled at Syracuse that fall.”

During his time there, Andrew found himself tapping into his intellect and leadership skills more than ever before, earning top grades and being elected President of the Graduate Student Business Association. While also working part time, he was constantly involved in school events and was given a Service and Academic Award from the Dean when he graduated. Almost immediately, he was hired to work at American Management Systems, where he was constantly traveling around the country throughout the week. During his time at AMS, he met his future

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

wife, Terri, and began a semi-long distance relationship due to his constant traveling.

Andrew eventually found himself unable to travel every week after tearing his ACL during a skiing accident, and while he was disappointed to leave the company, he was relieved to finally be able to stay in D.C. and work on his budding relationship. He was quickly hired by Bell Atlantic Video Services (BVS) in 1993, where he joined a team of talented and bright individuals on a project to send video through wires to interactive televisions, since the Internet had yet to appear in the market. “We were aware from an engineering perspective how we could send video through telephone lines, but we hadn’t yet figured out how we would track customers, bill them, and give them video support,” he explains. To add to their list of complications, inefficiency was rampant in the consulting world, with companies outsourcing work to firms across the country that unnecessarily inflated prices.

Often, Andrew would find himself sharing a few beers with his coworkers, trying to imagine a better way to accomplish their goals. “We wanted to build a small, local consulting firm where no one had to travel, which would automatically cut 30 to 40 percent of costs,” he explains now. “We also saw the flaws in the pyramid structure of big businesses, and decided we would keep it to just us and the people doing the work, so we could offer services to our clients for a lot less money.”

After Andrew and his colleagues spent four years dreaming up their ideal consulting firm, Bell Atlantic closed down the organization running their project after realizing the essential piece they were missing was not the technology, but the video content. “Bell Atlantic was really just a pipe, and the people with the content, such as the movie guys out in LA, were the ones really controlling the whole operation,” Andrew explains. “So the company gave us two options: we could find a new job back at the mother ship of Bell Atlantic, or they’d give us a chunk of money to start over with. We realized that if we were ever going to start the company we’d been dreaming about, now was the time.”

Thus, in 1997, Andrew and several coworkers from Bell Atlantic took their money and created AAJ. The initial intent of the fledgling company was to do project-based software development for the media industry around D.C., so they targeted local companies like AOL, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, NPR and The Washington Post,. By this point, the Internet was becoming a phenomenon, and since Andrew and his team were so well versed in it, they immediately found traction. “Pretty soon, clients started coming to me saying, ‘We really liked that guy you sent us for the project. Now that it’s over, can

we borrow him for five or six months? What’s his hourly rate?’” Andrew explains. “Suddenly, that line of the business took off. We never intended to build a staffing model, but clients wanted it, and I found it was actually a much more efficient way to bill the clients. Before, when I’d give a fixed price for a project, I often lost money going back in and doing constant revisions after it was completed, but with this model, we billed the client by the hour, so they got exactly what they wanted, and could see exactly how everything added up.”

The model proved exceptionally successful, and today, the company is typically hired to do staffing work for clients who are trying to accomplish something that does not require a full-time employee, or clients that experience a spike in workload that warrants a temporary extra set of hands. “We always try to find people who will be happy doing the work they are hired for, both technically and culturally. We never force a fit just to deliver people to the client,” Andrew explains. “The biggest complaint we ever get is that we don’t find enough candidates for the client, but that’s because when we finally do deliver a staffer, we’ve found the perfect person for the job. I think this is where my computer science background comes into play the most, because I can test the people we hire for staffing, and I know who knows their stuff and who doesn’t.”

As the company continues to grow and thrive, Andrew readily affirms that his biggest goal for the company is to maintain its spotless reputation. “You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who has ever worked for or with us who has a single bad thing to say about the company,” he says. “There are of course a few projects that may not have gone as planned, but we always try to do the right thing by everybody involved.”

Throughout all the twists and turns his career has taken, Andrew credits his wife, Terri, for staying by his side and supporting him every step of the way. “We were married in 1996, just before we started AAJ, and sometimes I wonder if she still would have married me had she known how much debt we were about to jump into,” he laughs. “But we pulled through that, just like we’ve pulled through everything else. We are similar in most ways, but complementary in the ways we differ, so we balance each other out.”

Andrew and Terri have one daughter, Maxine, who is currently beginning to think about colleges and career paths. When offering advice for the next phase of her life, he encourages her to follow the career that will bring her the most joy, rather than the one that will bring her the most money. Yet, while he recalls regretting having made a decision to the contrary early on in his career, he readily identifies magic in the mistakes.

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“I didn’t plan to do any of this,” he says. “If someone told me 20 years ago that this is what I’d be doing now, I wouldn’t have believed them. I always thought of my career as the result of going with the flow and accidentally stumbling into the right place at the right time, but my wife tells me it’s more about the good decisions I’ve made along the way, and I think she’s right. Deciding to go to Syracuse was a good choice. Making the decision to leave

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AMS to work for this great group of people at Bell Atlantic was a good choice. Marrying Terri was a good choice, and starting AAJ was a good choice.” By flowing with steady purpose through life’s twists and turns, embracing the accidents and making sound decisions along the way, waking up to realize you’re exactly where you want to be is not so farfetched a fate.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Richard Pineda The Promise Without fail, Richard Pineda has lived his life with his sights set on the horizon. Ever since the day he first stepped off the plane and onto American soil with his mother and brother at the age of eight, he has looked for ways to maximize the opportunity he was given when he was brought here. “My mother made personal sacrifices to bring us to America because she wanted a better future for us,” he remembers.

At the time, however, it began to look as if the young boy’s horizon would be cut short. Stricken with a severe heart condition known as a ventricular septal defect, doctors told his mother that he wouldn’t live past twenty years old.

Richard’s mother was shocked that the life she had worked so hard to give her son would be taken so soon, but she refused to resign to despair, instead doing all she could to promote his survival while hoping that research and technology would yield a way out. Richard had three open heart surgeries over the next several years, the last taking place just before he started high school.

“I can still remember lying in the hospital room during that time,” he says today. “I said to the Man above, ‘Let me out of here and I’ll do great things. I will live life not recklessly, but to its fullest. I will make an impact. Whatever it is I do, I will do it right.’”

Now the Chairman, CEO, and cofounder of Spear, Inc., Richard is still going strong several decades later, and his life—a steady sprint that has never rested on any one accomplishment, but has instead used each one as a point from which to leap to the next—has been as good as the promise he made that day.

Committed to delivering performance that drives results, Spear is an IT solutions provider and management consulting firm launched in 2012 to focus on providing solutions to the federal marketplace. “I founded a company with my business partner, Gino Antonelli, because we felt that, in order to really and truly make an impact, we had to start from a clean, white sheet of paper without any excess baggage,” Richard explains. “I had learned a lot from leaders I had worked under, like Ross Perot Sr., Ross Perot Jr., and Michael Dell. Gino and I knew we wanted to

build a culture of professionalism in the workplace, with a focus on financial stability and developing relationships with good partners. With that in mind, we assessed the marketplace and competitive landscape and started building the kind of company we’d be proud to have our own son or daughter work for someday.”

In its first year, the Spear leadership team set the stage for success by hiring quality candidates and demonstrating the ability to rapidly produce key material for any pursuit, signing over $5 million in total contract value with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Operations Command, and DISA. Fundamental to this progress has been Richard and Gino’s extensive network, which afford access to key decision makers and compound their ability to get things done for their clients. “What we know from our years in the sport of deal making is what differentiates us today,” Richard remarks. “There’s a reference book entitled, It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small; It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow.

That couldn’t hold truer for us in the federal space. Our clients have repeatedly found that, when it comes to getting things done faster or more effectively, Gino or I have always come through for them, and that reputation, in essence, is what’s building this company.”

Perhaps more compelling than the how of Spear’s creation, however, is the why. Government consulting was more than just a crossroads for aligning Richard’s financial and IT expertise—it was a way for him to make a real difference. “One need look no further than the daily news to see that our government needs help,” he points out. “I never joined the Armed Forces or served as a federal civilian employee, but I thought the next best thing was to become a Parkway Patriot, which is the opposite of a Beltway Bandit. From supporting the war fighter to taking care of our citizens, Spear can help ensure that our taxpayer dollars are spent in the most efficient and effective ways possible.”

Richard also felt he could have a greater impact as a small business owner than he could as an executive at a large company. Large businesses with multiple offerings serving several markets face less maneuverability dur-

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ing lean times, while those focused solely on the federal government space have a hard time competing in today’s environment. “I love servicing our customers, negotiating deals, aligning with partners, leading our employees, and the human interaction that working in a smaller company like Spear imparts,” he affirms. “A drive to lead was built into my DNA, and building and growing Spear has really allowed me to exercise that. But I also do it for my family. I work hard to make sure that future generations of Pinedas have opportunities I didn’t have.”

Indeed, growing up in the Philippines was not always easy. When his mother moved the family to the U.S. in 1981, she had no idea where she would live or work. She ended up getting two jobs so she could afford her sons’ private school education, which left little time to monitor their activities. As such, Richard and his brother developed a keen intrinsic motivation and self-discipline at a very young age Richard earned his first buck washing cars, and he later worked several months as a host at a restaurant, but his first steady job was as a teller at the First Virginia Bank the summer before his junior year of high school. “I loved working with money and interacting with people,” he recalls, “and it allowed me to learn the banking business.”

This job set the stage for his experience as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, where he majored in finance and remembers vividly his characteristic urge to move on to the next big thing. “I just wanted to graduate and make money, running as far as I could in life,” he says. “So I did my four years of undergraduate studies and then returned to First Virginia Bank upon graduating in 1995. I’m a creature of habit in certain things, and First Virginia Bank was a good, safe transition.” He wasn’t moving so fast through life, though, that he overlooked one of the best things that crossed his path—his high school sweetheart, Kate.

“When I met her, without any hesitation or reservation, I said, ‘I’m going to marry that woman,’” he laughs today.

He was right.

Before long, Richard was selected to go on a special mergers and acquisitions project at the bank’s headquarters, where he served as a representative for the corporate team in performing due diligence for an acquisition underway. After three months of that lifestyle, he realized he could do better than the position he had accepted right out of college. That’s why, in 1997, he accepted a position with Soza & Company, an emerging Government Contractor.

“I was interviewed to do a cost benefit analysis out of the Pentagon,” he remembers. “It was less money than I was making at the time, but it sounded like fun, and I knew I’d be able to grow there. That’s what started the ride.”

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year, Richard and Kate married, and he set his sights on a senior financial analyst position. Once he attained that, he wanted to be a manager, and then a director. By age 30, shortly after obtaining his MBA from George Washington University, he was made Vice President at Perot Systems Government Services, where he led the Financial & Business Services Group.

But that did not stop Richard in his quest for the next “big thing,” and he immediately set his sights on Senior Vice President. When he attained that, he worked for and landed the role of Executive VP, then COO, and ultimately President & CEO of Dell Services Federal Government. After working his way up from 1997 to 2009, he found himself at the helm of a $1.2 billion Federal Unit, leading 3,200 employees and a force of 5,000, including subcontractors.

From Soza & Company, to Perot Systems, to Dell Corporation, Richard had the fortunate opportunity to meet and learn from the Sozas, Perots, and Dell. “Through leadership meetings and direct interaction, I was able to watch them perform the art of the sell,” Richard recalls.

“The Sozas and Perots were models for good leadership and how to take care of people. After that exposure, I always tried to be as true as I could to my people. When times got tough with the integrations, I worked to fill the gap between corporate and the human touch.”

When Perot Systems was acquired by Dell, a Fortune 34 company and a $62 billion entity, Richard headed its federal practice. “Beyond entrepreneurship, innovation, and supply chain management, I learned about operating in a politically charged, multi-billion dollar environment,” he says. “Through all those years, I was like a robot always on the lookout for the next deal, and the next, and the next.”

Indeed, Kate put up with Richard’s long hours because he was trying to do the best he knew how for the family, but for the love of the game, he was addicted to the next deal, negotiation, or position. His mother would say, “You think you’re a big shot now? You’re letting a lot of friends and family pass you by, and we don’t know you anymore.” Taking her advice to heart, he finally left his position at Dell on a Wednesday early in 2012. That Sunday, before he had gotten the chance to tell her, his mother passed away, marking a big turning point in his approach to business. He would still keep his promise to do the best he could in all he did, but this time, “the best” would be defined a bit differently.

Richard initially thought he would go on to run another large company, but after planning and strategizing with Gino, starting Spear was clearly the right path forward. “Part of me wishes I had done it sooner, and the

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

other part feels the timing was just right because of everything I had learned and the network of relationships and associates I was able to invest in,” he remarks. “I’ve had a series of defining moments in my life, and now I look back and apply certain things from each of them to how we’re building Spear. We only get this one chance to build the company’s history, so we are taking sure, planted footsteps, one after another.”

This methodical, thoughtful journey began with their first hires, a financial person and a VP of human resources, both selected because Richard and Gino wanted to focus on setting the foundational elements of the company—a code of conduct, business ethics guidelines, and an employee handbook. “It’s a different approach from running a business out of your basement and focusing on getting the first ten bodies billable on contract,” Richard remarks. “For us, it was an installment start, but it was at all the right gates and levels to scale up with excellence. We want to make sure we make an impact on each and every employee that walks through our doors, because in essence, we want individuals to build careers at Spear and feel passionate and committed to what they do. In truth, the Spear story is a great one to tell because we are founded on the understanding that our employees are our greatest asset.“ As this story goes, the company was built to grow and thrive to not only aid its customers, but also to be an employer of choice. With a focus on promoting professionalism in the workplace, ensuring financial stability, and strategically choosing the customers and partners with which they do business, Richard’s leadership style has also evolved over the years. In his days at Soza and Perot Systems, he often found himself working with people twice his age, so it took more work to qualify himself as a leader. In those situations, he would prove himself through technical prowess, aggressive setting and achievement of goals, and his ability to grow business and oversee teams with a strong focus on communications. “I invested a lot in simply spending time with people,” he remarks. “At the beginning of the year, I asked each staff member their goals for that year and for the next three years. I asked what they were going to do to get there and

what I could do to help. Everything was measurable with milestones, and I checked in with them every quarter. I earned each individual’s respect by helping them get to where they wanted to be and by demonstrating that they weren’t just a number—that what they wanted to get out of the job mattered to me. Building trust and communication is key in leadership.”

In advising young people entering the workforce today, Richard stresses the importance of knowing one’s limits. “Moderate your confidence and ability without being too arrogant and turning off your audience,” he says. “Continue to pursue learning, because you’ll never know enough.” In keeping with this advice, Richard enrolled in George Washington University’s 24-month MBA program, but sailed through it and finished in only 20 months. “At the time, I just wanted to move onto the next big thing, but now I wish I could stop, go back, and just learn,” he laughs.

For the most part, however, Richard wouldn’t change anything about the way he’s barreled through life, full-steam ahead and wasting no time. “Every step of the way, I’ve done it the Richard Pineda way,” he says. “And I wouldn’t be half the man I am today, or have a quarter of the success I do, without my wife Kate’s support. She grounds me, backs me, supports me, and puts me in check behind the scenes when it’s required. She’s sacrificed for our family, and she’s a hard charger.” Because Kate is a Navy nurse, and because supporting war fighters is important to them, the Pinedas have given back by way of the Wounded Warrior Project, and have also helped to organize an annual golf tournament for the pediatric heart program at Inova Fairfax Hospital. “We like to give back in ways that are meaningful to people in our community, our neighborhood, and our church,” Richard remarks.

Richard is now focused on combining his passion for success with his desire to give back to the community through Spear. Making the people the priority—whether it’s employees, customers, or business partners—is what truly sets Spear apart in the industry and will be the true key to its success in the long run.

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Agustin Ramos So Others Can Follow It was the final days of his senior year in high school when Agustin Ramos faced his first great challenge in leadership. The year-long competition among the four houses of his British-style K-12 school in Argentina was drawing to a close, and Agustin was the captain of House Yellow. With two days of intense contests in sports remaining before the winning house was announced, Agustin had to face one simple fact that could not be denied: in the school’s thirteen year history of the house competition, House Yellow had never won.

“When the final day of sports came,” Agustin recalls today, “I was everywhere.

I remember running to every single event and talking with the little ones in elementary, all the way up to the senior students. It was like coaching.”

At the end of the day, the scores were tallied. Agustin’s enthusiasm and natural leadership ability pushed his house to play their hardest, and for the first time in thirteen years, House Yellow had won the sports.

“It was a defining moment and is still a potent memory,” Agustin says. “Seeing the faces of the House Yellow students after the results were in was an incredible high. Everybody was looking at each other. All the houses were shocked.

Yellow, really? We were euphoric. It was amazing for everybody since it was the first time for Yellow to win, and it was amazing for me because it was my first encounter with building a team and leading them to success. I could empower people to win in whatever they were doing. Everything counted. If you really talk to people and make them aware of how important it is, and show them how good they will feel if they win, then you can reach them and give them what they need to succeed. On that day, going around talking and cheering and connecting with people… I was exhausted, but we won.”

Agustin’s experience all those years ago was instrumental in shaping his sense of himself as a leader. “Maybe after thirteen years, House Yellow was due to win,” he acknowledges. “But what matters is that I was their captain when it happened—I saw the joy on their faces, and I felt it. Maybe the right question to ask is: Who wants to be the

captain of the house that had never won?”

Articulate and introspective, Agustin is eager to ask these questions of himself, just as he is eager to take on the unknown. This drive to ask the hard questions and challenge himself has led him from winning the house competition in high school to pursuing aggressive success in numerous and varied industries. Novelty-seeking and always after a challenge, Agustin chased a path through architecture, marketing, real estate, and retail before he finally found his greatest and most fulfilling challenge yet.

On the verge of returning to Argentina after a year-long consulting project in the United States, he took a daring leap of faith that has taken him from an entry level position seven years ago to becoming the Chief Operating Officer of NMS Healthcare today.

NMS Healthcare, formed by Matthew Neiswanger in 2003, owns and operates three cutting-edge long term care facilities in Maryland serving more than 500 patients daily. “We do not run long term care the classic way,” he says. “If you look at long term care or a nursing home, you think of elderly people who are in this place because they can’t care for themselves, which can broadly include assisted living or a skilled nursing home. We differentiate ourselves by really going after high acuity cases. Of the 250 beds in our Hyattsville facility, 50 are pulmonary care beds. We host over 70 dialysis patients with 24 of them in need of both dialysis and mechanical ventilation simultaneously. Our patient demographic is all based on acuity.”

It’s not possible to tell Agustin’s story at NMS Healthcare without telling the story of its founder.

“Matt worked his way up in the long term care industry from the very bottom as a geriatric nursing assistant,” Agustin says. “He worked all through his undergraduate and then master’s degrees. Eventually he became an administrator, running a facility. One day he had the opportunity to buy a skilled nursing home that was in distress. He put everything he had into forming a partnership to take over the building. The guy is kind of a genius when it comes to nursing homes. He had a very good vision of what was needed for a long term care

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facility to be successful in an industry where most of them struggle.”

With the foundation of Matt’s nuanced knowledge base, NMS bought its first building and turned it around completely. In a few short years, one building led to two, then three, and 220 beds became 532. “We have invested over $16 million in the portfolio to build what is a niche between a hospital and a skilled nursing home,” Agustin says. “A hospital often retains patients like ours because there is no next setting in which to discharge them. Well, that’s where we come in. Our model addresses this gap.”

When Agustin first met Matt, he was interviewing for a job at NMS, and the long term care visionary told the novice he could offer neither a salary nor a position that was commensurate with Agustin’s kind of experience. “I told him that it was alright, that I had heard great things and it was a pleasure to meet him,” Agustin remembers.

“He told me to give him a call before I decided definitely to return to Argentina.” Two months later, Agustin was certain he would make the move, so he called Matt to set up another meeting. “He offered me a job and said that if I accepted, I could end up running one of his companies one day, but I’d have to learn the business first,” says Agustin.

With that, Agustin started as Director of Quality Assurance, putting all his chips on the comment Matt made.

His family was skeptical, but Agustin was drawn, as he describes it, almost irresistibly to the challenge. “Part of what drew me was that it was something I didn’t know,” he explains. “Matt did just what he said he would do. Not too long after I started, he offered me the opportunity to run the Dialysis Center, his smallest business. Three years later he promoted me to Vice President of Operations of the long term care portfolio where I learned the whole business from him.”

Agustin has been with NMS for seven years now, the longest he’s been with any one company. In his tenure as COO, he achieved the Health Facilities Association of Maryland (HFAM) Presidential Leadership Award in 2011 “For outstanding leadership and service in providing quality care for Marylanders most in need and for tireless service to the HFAM provider community, advancing the critical issues of eligibility determination and guardianship.” And the constant that has kept him so thoroughly engaged has been the freedom he has to tackle challenges.

“I’ve had the opportunity to innovate and to implement new ideas at NMS Healthcare, and I’ve been able to experience the joy and exhilaration of leadership. It’s been a perfect fit for me.”

The appreciation is mutual. Indeed, Agustin’s agile nature and swiftly adapting approach have made him an ideal leader in an industry undergoing intense change and 122

scrutiny. But one of his greatest assets, paradoxically, has been his lack of experience in healthcare. “I was and am very naïve,” he explains. “But that means my barriers are very low for creativity and exploring new things. You put all of that into the equation, and it’s a good mix. It has allowed me to grow as a leader, to grow the company, and to become one of the first long term care portfolios to run 100 percent paperless in the nation.”

Long before the public started reading headlines about electronic health records in the Affordable Care Act, NMS Healthcare was already paperless, thanks to Agustin’s initiative to transition NMS’s medical records paperless. At the time he enacted it, the initiative was bold and expensive, representing an immense training challenge.

“We had people who did not know how to turn on a computer,” Agustin says. “Even Matt said, ‘I’ll be dead before I see a nursing home go paperless.’ That was a trigger for me. I was certain he would be very much alive when I was done with it.”

It took over two years to become fully paperless, and along the way, Agustin and his team encountered plenty of difficulties. “One lady, a nursing assistant, was trying to document in the computer system,” he recalls. “She was having trouble and getting very frustrated, until she started shouting at the computer and banging on the desk, saying she was doing what she was trained to do but it wasn’t working. Of course it turned out that she was holding the mouse upside-down.”

Agustin’s determination and leadership ability pushed NMS to set a new standard in the industry for record keeping. “We are always trying to be the first ones,” he affirms. “We try to mark the path so others can follow. We’ve done it with paperless documentation, with mechanical ventilation, and with vent-dialysis. This year the goal is to launch the first bedside dialysis program in a long term care setting.”

Entering the healthcare industry not only meant a tremendous shift in Agustin’s technical focus, but also in the philosophical underpinnings of his drive to succeed.

“I entered a setting that was completely foreign to me,” he says, “but that I knew carries great meaning. After I came into healthcare, the ‘why’ for me became deeper.

The impact of our work is on people that are in need.

They are not in a position of choice, and that simple fact changes the urgency for me. It’s about helping people. It’s about leading a team to success, and having that success mean real improvement in real people’s lives. That’s what has kept me in healthcare for seven years now. It’s very fulfilling and rewarding.”

Agustin’s grasp of his own leadership may have been ignited on that last day of the house competition, but his

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

love of building can be traced back even earlier to the days he would observe his father’s business in Argentina. “As a child and teenager,” he says, “I saw what my father was doing as an entrepreneur. I would always ask him to take me down to the construction sites to see what was going on. Sometimes he would build from new, and sometimes he would take something old and change it. I was amazed with that.”

The young boy was so amazed, that his first interest in university would be architecture. But before long, he would realize that he was much more strongly drawn to business. His life’s work would be more than just designing the building itself. He wanted to have a hand in a business’s conception, financing, and execution as a much larger project, with ever greater challenges and different kinds of rewards.

Agustin’s inclination to introspection and deep mental challenge is a thread that permeates his childhood as well, expressed as his passion for playing music. “My family always had a piano at home,” he recalls. “My parents made sure of that once I started piano lessons when I was eight. As I got older and began to set out on my own, every time someone would ask me what I wanted as a gift, my answer was a baby grand piano. I wanted that sound. And after many years, I finally got my first baby grand in 2012 as a birthday present from my wife.”

On the one hand, the baby grand represented something that Agustin had always wanted but could never afford. On the other hand, it also represented something he would never master. “There was a time when I would read musical scores and jazz chords,” he recalls. “Now, I just play whatever comes to me. Every time I sit at a piano, I’m not trying to play someone else’s tunes. I’m just playing what comes out. In doing so, I can feel my limitations—I can hear what’s in my head and see how my hands can’t quite translate it to reality. It’s something I really cannot master or dominate, and it’s a constant attraction to me.

Golf is the same for me. I like golf because I’m bad at it. I find intriguing things that I cannot ever truly master.”

Agustin’s piano also represents a connection to his family. “I see my children taking the same interest in it, but with hugely different results,” he says. “My daughter is mastering the pieces she pursues. She can come back from a class, sit down with the score, and sight read—it’s amazing. It’s something I really admire.”

Agustin’s deep relationship with his piano offers a unique window into the mind and also the leadership style of an inventive and forward-thinking innovator.

When he has an idea forming that needs to come out, he sometimes turns to his piano as an instrument not just to produce sounds, but to entice his very thoughts from their

formative place in his head. “If I need to think about something, I need to not think about it,” he says. “Once you have one idea of how to solve a problem, it’s very hard to go around it or find other possible solutions. If I have some vague idea of what I want, my process is to always question it first, then let it go. If you keep thinking about the same thing, you can’t get away from whatever your original conception was. You have to take the idea and place it somewhere in the back of your mind, and then completely disconnect and let it work. The answer will come, hopefully with more thoughts of possible solutions that you can put through a process of elimination. It’s a habit I inherited from my mother!”

Agustin strives to extend this philosophy to his leadership style. “I do try to do the same with my staff, which can be difficult,” he says. “My team can sometimes feel like I’m always questioning their ideas or never accepting their thoughts, but it’s the same way I treat my own ideas.”

Agustin’s leadership style also focuses on robust analysis, the value of which he learned personally when a project he was working on in Argentina hit a glitch. “The project itself did go very, very well,” he says. “But internally, the partnership fractured, and suddenly I had a taste of how badly things can go. I lost a friend because of business, and I learned what makes a risk a huge risk.” This crucial experience taught Agustin to be more cautious. “I had a huge blind spot, and I learned that you can hit the wall because of it. And when you hit it, you hit hard. But you just have to get up, learn from it, and try again.”

When Agustin hit the wall in this manner, his father told him it was probably good for him. “Up until that point, I had had nothing but success in my career,” he admits. “I always got positions that should have gone to candidates with more experience.” Setting out with a degree in marketing, Agustin had become the regional marketing manager for Burger King in Argentina when he was only 21. Later, when he became a product and brand manager for SanCor, the biggest dairy producer in Argentina, he was a mere 24. From there he had finished his Master’s in Strategy, created his consultancy and set out on his own, and until then had seen only success. “It was an important lesson,” he affirms.

In the wake of that experience, Agustin’s leadership style has been more inclusive, prioritizing information sharing among all team members. “If you’re very charismatic, you can maybe get away with telling people what to do. But that’s not me,” he says. “I’m more someone who encourages people to make decisions. I push them to do better every day, not by telling them what to do, but through sharing information and making them aware of what’s going on so they can then Agustin Ramos

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make the right decisions by themselves. My management and leadership style is built on trust.”

In considering the people who have performed the best under his leadership, and in recalling his own experience, Agustin’s main point of advice for recent graduates is to urge them to explore and to always be ready to adapt.

“Prepare yourself to blend with your environment,” he says, “but do what you do with conviction and stay true to yourself. Stay focused on the things you can control and keep a very open mind to changes around you. Things change, so you have to adapt. And have fun doing what you do. If you are not having fun, change it.”

This approach stems from his childhood when, at the age of four, Agustin and his family moved to France and then Spain for a total of four years, fundamentally shaping his character. “The fact that I was born in Argentina, moved to France, and then to Spain and back at such an early stage of my life could have helped my ability to adapt to a new environment,” he reflects. “Business is about adapting.”

His family may have moved several times in a short span, but when they were in Argentina, the unifying atmosphere of his house played a prominent role in his daily

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life. “Home was the center of everything,” Agustin laughs.

“If you were sitting having coffee with my parents in the living room, you would see so many people coming and going—friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, relatives. There was always movement. Everyone met at home.”

Today, Agustin and his wife, Victoria, have two children of their own: Micaela (9) and Lucas (5). They were high school sweethearts who met when they were fifteen, and this year will celebrate their thirteenth wedding anniversary. “She has supported me unconditionally in everything that I have done,” he says. “She even had to leave her job and give up her career when we moved to the U.S., and for that I still owe her. I could have not accomplished this much without her.”

As Agustin looks forward, he aims for growth— for both NMS Healthcare, and for himself as a person and leader. And if past is prologue, that growth is coming. With each time he sits down at the piano to unearth his next great business vision, and with each initiative he pushes ahead of the curve, Agustin has committed to pursuing the best ideas and the best path forward so others can follow to a better future.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Janet Samuelson For the Cause The reasons people decide to go to business school are vast and varied, but most, at the root, are about the art and science of business itself. Some people hope to make themselves more marketable to secure better positions in existing businesses, while others dream of starting businesses of their own. When Janet Samuelson decided she needed an MBA, however, it was not because she hoped for any of that. Rather, it was because of a cause.

Growing up in a service-oriented family, causes were always at the forefront of her mind, with a sense of responsibility and stewardship forming the lens with which she viewed the world and her place in it. As a teenager, she volunteered with the local hospital, and after high school, she went on to receive an undergraduate degree in rehabilitative services. Given her love of causes and giving back, she felt drawn to the nonprofit world and began walking down that career path, excelling at her first nonprofit sector jobs until she was promoted several times over and quickly rose into a management position.

In spite of her early professional successes, however, Janet turned a critical eye on herself and her ambitions.

Without a business education, she could never be the kind of well-rounded executive her organizations—and her causes—needed. “I realized, once I got out and started working in direct services and moving up into management, that the service side of education wasn’t going to be enough for me,” she remembers today. “I realized I really needed to understand business, because in many ways, nonprofits are very complicated businesses—more complex than you would think.” With that, she returned to school to complete an MBA, brought her new talents to bear at a small organization in Florida, and became a CEO at the age of 28. Since then, she’s used her unique blend of business acumen and hands-on service experience to redirect and expand worthwhile programs, doing well while doing good.

Today, Janet is the President and CEO of ServiceSource, a massive non-profit comprised of five sepa-

rate organizations and serving about 14,000 people each year. With an annual budget of $130 million, their programs operate in nine states and in Washington, D.C. The nature of these programs runs the gamut, but ServiceSource’s main focus is job placement and the employment of people with disabilities. To this end, the company not only finds jobs by connecting employers with employees, but also creates jobs, winning federal contracts and staffing projects. “Because unemployment for people with disabilities is so high, and because many people with disabilities—particularly intellectual and mental health disabilities—often have very structural barriers to employment, we also play a big role in what we call affirmative employment,” Janet explains. “This means we contract, primarily with the federal government and also with commercial businesses, and affirmatively hire people with disabilities.”

Of ServiceSource’s 3,000 employees, nearly 1,600 are individuals with disabilities. Every year the group receives about $100 million in federal contracts to operate and secure mailrooms, provide military dining and food services, manage data, and provide total facility management. Additionally, the group works with injured veterans, runs a long-term rehabilitation program, and provides housing support.

ServiceSource has come a long way since Janet was recruited as President twenty years ago. At that time, it was known as Fairfax Opportunities Unlimited and had not yet acquired the four other organizations under the ServiceSource umbrella today. Its services reached about 700 people, and its annual budget was between $7 and 8 million. Guiding the helm of the company during a period of unprecedented evolution, Janet’s leadership has augmented the company’s natural organic growth through her uncanny knack for expansion, acquisition, and financial and structural analysis. Four additional, similarly-focused organizations have been acquired by ServiceSource since 2000, and the super-structure Janet has created allows the groups to take a more regional approach to their service provision. “In every case, the

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choice to bring in an organization meant something good added to the mix of our services,” Janet affirms.

“So even though the outside organization was going through some sort of struggle that made it interested in becoming part of our bigger pool, the acquisitions were indubitably win/win situations for all the people we serve.”

Janet has become an expert at identifying this sort of mutually beneficial acquisition, and while she has no formal acquisition strategy for the future, she is open to expanding ServiceSource further. The advantages of such consolidation are obvious, as bringing together organizations with similar missions and allowing them to exchange information and resources cuts costs precipitously. “The nonprofit world is very complex,” she affirms. “The regulation, the requirements, and the licensure are just some of the considerations we have to navigate. Our acquisitions have really allowed us to add a lot of depth to our corporate bench without costing a lot. We have an exceptionally low overhead rate for a non-profit organization, and yet we have some of the best corporate support.” Since joining ServiceSource, the individual organizations have been allowed to maintain their management teams and local service design and delivery, while consolidating their service provisions under the ServiceSource umbrella has created economies of scale.

Through the company’s unprecedented growth, Janet has been careful that the group’s large size doesn’t impede the kind of individualized attention each unique case and client needs. In this context, her service background helps her make informed decisions that a run-of-the-mill executive without service training could not. “The model of employment support that we use is a very individualized,” she says. “You can have a model that’s scalable, but services have to be provided one-on-one to a person with very unique needs.” As the CEO of a non-profit, Janet has to walk a line between entrepreneurship and service, and her background has enabled her to do so with a grace few have cultivated.

Janet grew up in Connecticut, where both of her parents encouraged her to engage with and give back to her community. Her mother stayed home while Janet and her two younger sisters were small children and then began a teaching career. Her father earned a law degree at Yale and became an attorney, going on to serve as elected Judge of Probate in their town for 25 years. Though the two met in the Navy, their backgrounds were hardly similar. Her mother’s father was a Congressman, while, in her father’s immigrant family, almost no one went to college. And although her 126

father ultimately did very well for himself, Janet didn’t have a childhood of affluence. Her father stayed in the Navy for ten years, and until his graduation from Yale Law afterward, Janet and her family lived with her paternal grandfather.

In high school, Janet began to explore community service more deeply. She joined the Key Club, an extracurricular group dedicated to service. She volunteered at the local hospital, where she worked in the emergency room and the physical therapy department. During the summers, she volunteered at a camp for people with disabilities, and her experiences there were truly transformative. Although many of the volunteers preferred working with small children, Janet was more interested in engaging the adults. At 16, she was assigned to work one-on-one with a non-verbal middle-aged man. Despite his severe disabilities, Janet worked daily to provide him with a meaningful camp experience by facilitating his participation in the camp activities. “He was the sibling of somebody I was in high school with, so I think that experience was instrumental in my recognition that disability is something that crosses economic strata, race, gender, and any other classification. It gave me a different perspective.”

Although she spent the majority of her childhood in Connecticut, Janet often visited her maternal grandparents in West Virginia. Her grandfather had served on the Board of Trustees at Alderson Broaddus, a small Baptist College near their home. He passed away just as Janet began looking into schools, and it was one of only two, along with University of Connecticut, that she applied to. At the time, Janet planned to study physical therapy, and although she was admitted to U Conn’s 4-year program while Alderson Broadus had no such program, her preference for the small school in West Virginia won out. The decision turned out to be a fateful one, as it was there that she decided to pursue a degree in rehabilitative services.

After college, Janet returned to Connecticut to accept a job as a workplace supervisor at the Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC) in Hartford. She enjoyed the work, but had trained to be a vocational evaluator, analyzing vocational tests to determine what work people were suited for and setting occupational goals. Her employer had no such program, so after several years there, she was eager to find a position that would better utilize her training and applied to work with a nonprofit in Danbury.

Although she again had an overall positive experience, the job didn’t turn out to be the perfect fit she’d hoped it would be. “I didn’t like vocational evaluation

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as much as I thought I would,” she recalls. “I really liked the production side of things—the hands-on experiences of connecting the people with the work and the satisfaction that those connections and successes garnered.”

Recognizing this inclination, she applied for a promotion and became the Production Manager running the workshop. Not long after that, she was put in charge of both the workshop and operational oversight, and the many roles she took on during this transitional phase in her career have proved to be a great professional asset today. “I started in direct services and really worked my way up, and that’s something that’s been very helpful,” she recounts. “It played a big role in allowing me to understand how businesses tick on all levels.” Because Janet has worked in many of the positions she oversees now, she’s better suited than many executives to manage her team with the thoughtfulness that comes from true empathy and personal experience.

As Janet’s responsibilities broadened, she knew it was time to return to school and pursue an MBA. “I moved into overseeing the work center operations and having more operational responsibilities, and I knew that, if I was going to be good at it, I’d need more than my human services training,” she asserts. “I was responsible for business development, which entailed a lot of things that hadn’t been part of my undergraduate work.” Janet began pursuing her degree at the University of Connecticut but completed it at Florida Tech in 1985. Of the big move from her home state, she recalls, “I went to visit my best friend in Florida in April, and when I came back, and we had a foot of snow. I called her up and said, ‘This is no way to live! I’m moving.’” Although it was somewhat of an impulse decision, the move served her well, both professionally and personally.

With her impressive range of career experience and ongoing education, Janet quickly found a position as the Assistant Executive Director for a small organization. Like ServiceSource, it focused on creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities. She was hired on as the number two under a man, Walter Payne, who was approaching retirement, and she took over as CEO a little over a year later. “Walt became a mentor and a key professional influence,” she remarks. “He remained my friend and mentor until his passing. He introduced me into the professional circles and made a lot of connections for me, and then he continued to offer me advice—sometimes whether I wanted it or not!”

As the years passed Janet married, had two children, and continued to grow her organization. Then, as her children prepared to enter school, she was recruited for a job in Fairfax, Virginia. She had served on

the Board of the National Association of Rehabilitation Facilities, in the vocational division, with the outgoing CEO. Impressed by her abilities, he recruited Janet to be interviewed for his position. Northern Virginia, with its well-regarded school systems, was an appealing choice, so she accepted the position and took over what was then Fairfax Opportunities Unlimited, and what would become ServiceSource.

The following years were shaped by growth and expansion. Recently, Janet has been pursuing a bold new path for the business, and once again broadening her professional abilities in the process. Bruce Wardinski, the CEO of Playa Resorts and Hotels and another mentor, first suggested private fundraising as a potentially huge untapped resource. “He was the Chair of our Operating Board and said we should be looking at fundraising because we have this compelling mission, are incredibly well-managed, and have very low overhead costs, so a lot of money goes to programs,” she says. “We’re the kind of organization people want to give money to.”

Janet was eager to pursue the idea and learned everything she needed to know to make it a reality, and she and Bruce set up a supporting charitable foundation. He agreed to Chair the Foundation Board, and they began recruiting people. “Bruce taught us that you don’t fundraise because you have to—that’s the worst reason,” she explains. “You fundraise because it can really enhance the quality of your programs, your outreach, and your support people.” With this in mind, the Foundation has been operating for six years now, and has raised about $4 million in operating money since its inception. Currently, they are kicking off a capital campaign with a goal of $15 million.

By every metric, ServiceSource has blossomed under Janet’s leadership. She’s received both an annual and a five-year Brava award from SmartCEO, as well as leadership awards from Source America among many others.

With a collaborative leadership style, she hires around her team’s strengths and weaknesses, seeking out people who can fill the gaps to make the organization the best it can be. Most important of all in her recipe of success, however, is commitment. “If you don’t have the heart for the mission, it doesn’t really matter how good you are technically,” she avows. “Commitment and heart are the underpinnings of everything we do.”

To college graduates entering the workforce today, Janet advises living an ethical life, but warns that the ability to do so often begins with financial responsibility. “When you’re young, you should pay yourself first,” she says. “Early on, you have to set yourself up Janet Samuelson

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for a position of financial security so that you never feel that your back is against the wall or that you have to make a decision that compromises your personal ethical standards. Financial pressure is the number one reason that people start down what can be a very slippery slope, so make those decisions early on to set yourself on strong financial footing.”

Finding that balance can bring success at no cost to one’s soul, which Janet holds to be critical. Through-

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out her career, she has sought out work that aligns with her quest for social justice while attaining success in the business world at the same time, using both goals to augment, refine, and maximize one another. In being willing to become anything her organization needed her to be, Janet’s professional career has been self-actualizing in every sense of the word, allowing her to create the kind of world worth living in while building the kind of life she hoped to live.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Sundeep Sanghavi What If? As with many college internships, those in the consultancy arm of the massive accounting firm Arthur Andersen are far from glamorous. In that capacity, Sundeep Sanghavi found himself, like his fellow interns, spending long hours dutifully stapling presentations, making sure they looked nice for delivery. Yet unlike his fellow interns, Sundeep was doing something more at the same time.

“It was the first truly professional experience of my life,” he recalls today. “My curiosity got the best of me, and I couldn’t help but look at the data on the pages in front of me and ask questions. That’s what data’s all about—asking the question, what if?”

Three months later, Sundeep was the first intern in the company to be promoted to a full-time analyst position within 90 days of joining the team. Now the cofounder and CEO of DataRPM Corporation, a company committed to enacting dramatic change in the way analytics is done today, his professional journey shows that the courage to ask questions can mean all the difference.

With over two decades of experience in the analytics world since that internship during his sophomore year in college, Sundeep noticed that a consistent pain point within the industry was the adoption of business intelligence (BI) and analytics “solutions” vs. one-off projects—solutions which require users to learn software that takes considerable time to master and implement.

“The way the world is moving today, you need the data immediately, in a real-time capacity, to make decisions” he explains. “Learning and implementation cycles are costly as there is no clear ROI. Time is money, and you can’t be waiting that long to learn and implement.”

Running again and again into these real-world problems with customers generated a wellspring of ideas and “what if?” questions in Sundeep, which led him to found DataRPM. The genesis of DataRPM relied on the timely conjoining of the talents of Sundeep and two key serial entrepreneurs, Shyamantak Gautam and Ruban Phukan. Gautam had a background in Big Data before

the term even existed in the financial services industry, having processed billions of transactions in minutes with IBM, and also having served as a chief architect at Sundeep’s previous startup, Razorsight. Ruban Phukan, on the other hand, had been a long-time search engine data scientist from Yahoo who had founded and taken a vertical search company to a successful exit. When the three got together in 2011 to launch DataRPM, it marked the third startup for each.

In their first meeting, the BHAG, or “big hairy audacious goal,” was to reinvent BI & Analytics by providing a simplistic version of Data Visualization, asking a question using natural language search. Ambitiously, they aimed to enable any data size, format, or source, any time anywhere, within a 30 day deployment window. “Thus launched the company’s birthing process: eight weeks of hack-a-thon using various technologies, followed by eight months of research and development,” Sundeep asserts. “We decided that, if we could create a product that eliminated long implementation cycles, kept the user experience so simple that a ten-year-old child or an 85-year-old grandparent could use it, and kept the costs minimal, we’d be onto something breakthrough.”

Sundeep’s team realized that, even after a multitude of vendors in the market and tens of billions invested in BI, the fundamental problems that BI was envisioned to solve largely remained unsolved, and actually worsened with the advent of Big Data. “We knew that, if we did analytics by keeping with traditional models which were built upon a relational data model, we wouldn’t be able to solve the basic problems of agility, ease of use, flexibility, scalability and affordability that have plagued the BI world for decades,” he remembers. “At that point there was little innovation in BI technology that addressed what we felt were the core issues. We had to overhaul the stack, including leveraging advanced search engine technology, which was one of the original and surprisingly overlooked Big Data technologies. We also launched the alpha version of the industry’s first Natural Language

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Analytics front-end, powered by a back-end computational search engine.”

Sundeep and his team figured out that, if they stored data in a different and unique format and made it available through an index, it could be delivered much faster. Utilizing a similar technology to that used in Google and Yahoo search engines, they created a product that organizes indexed data in a file storage system that can be used for analytical clustering, eliminating the cumbersome process of understanding how relationships are built from data tables, and making that system part of the file storage solution.

Despite their extensive preliminary legwork, the DataRPM team made no assumptions and kept their high hopes in check. “I genuinely believe that anything developed without prior knowledge or hands-on experience is an entrepreneurial dream that cannot succeed in reality,” says Sundeep. “That’s why, in October of 2011, we gave our product to Yahoo as early adopters, as well as to 14 other software companies in our network. We didn’t charge them anything to try it; we just wanted to know if our solution worked or if we were set up to fail.

Fortunately, we got some very good early indications.”

Even though the signs were good, Sundeep continued to stress test DataRPM’s limits. The company brought on 18 high school student interns to try out the product, and within the course of a one-hour tutorial, they were slicing and dicing data, running reports, and navigating the dashboards all by just asking questions.

Sundeep also called upon his nonprofit senior citizens group MastiGhar (which means Fun House) for Indian seniors who immigrated to the U.S. to be near their families, but who also face tremendous language and cultural barriers. Two hours each Sunday night, the group he facilitated gets together to play games, watch movies, or go on outings. They were more than happy to test out Sundeep’s brainchild, and within a single evening, they too were asking questions to get the instant answers and data visualization they wanted, without having to learn anything about the underlying system. Just as with the high school focus group, the DataRPM team was able to glean valuable insight from the test to see how the tool could be improved further.

In April of 2012, the founders brought the project out of stealth mode and went live, and several of their early adopters signed on as clients. “That’s when we knew we had the beginnings of a testable business model,” Sundeep confirms. Following these initial trials, DataRPM caught the attention of an unexpected path to market—software as a service (SaaS) companies and independent software vendors (ISVs). “They took notice of 130

the ease of use, the built-in agility, and the affordability that DataRPM offers its business users,” he says. “They started asking us for the ability to extend DataRPM to provide analytics to their own customer bases.” As ISVs’ customers became increasingly data savvy and began demanding comprehensive data analytics and reporting capabilities, the ISVs faced the huge challenge of developing these analytical tools in-house, which would require branching off from their core expertise to make significant investments in BI technology and infrastructure. DataRPM alleviated the need for incurring any additional infrastructure costs, man or machine, and gave ISVs and SaaS companies an avenue to remain focused on their main product offerings while still meeting their customers’ demands.

With a target market of independent software vendors and good lead generation, the company continued to grow, and in August 2012, DataRPM won an award for Hottest Tech Startup in DC. “There’s a lot of good momentum building,” Sundeep affirms. “We’re excited about being the only BI & Analytics Solution provider using Natural Language Analytics, as well as the fastest, simplest, and most affordable analytics solution we know of.”

The entrepreneurial spirit that underpins DataRPM’s success stems from the interplay of innovation, integrity, and tenacity that shaped Sundeep’s childhood.

Born in Bombay, India, to an entrepreneurial family that owned and operated Sanghavi Constructions, Sundeep started doing spreadsheet work for his father at a very young age. Mr. Sanghavi told his son that if he ever ran his own company, he had to know his numbers inside and out. “He taught me that any decision you make as a business leader must be based on the numbers,” Sundeep remembers. “They tell you who you are, what you are, and what you can do to really drive your business. That’s what got me involved early in the analytics world.

“My father and brother are certainly the guiding principles for my entrepreneurial spirit,” Sundeep continues. “My father also embodied the spirit of sacrifice when he gave up his elegant office in Bombay, where he had a chef, a chauffeur, and a servant, so that our family could move to America and pursue a brighter future together. He wanted to raise his children in a country whose founding fathers believed in hard work, commitment, integrity, and rising to face challenges.” In the US, Mr. Sanghavi took a job at Time Warner managing the shipping of compact disks. Sundeep’s mother, who didn’t work in India, got a job testing the barcode strips on the backs of credit cards for Chase Bank. Both worked hard and sacrificed everything necessary to raise their four

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

children and put them through college.

At nine years old, Sundeep started middle school in America but spoke no English. To help his parents earn money, he got a job on weekends delivering the newspaper. He would also go from door to door hanging Domino’s Pizza coupons on doors, even though the brutal Chicago winters. Recalling the attitude of togetherness that permeated his home in India, where up to 21 people would share his house at one time, he felt a strong drive to contribute to the good of the family.

Sundeep always loved numbers, and though his parents wanted him to be a doctor, he went on to major in finance at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He worked for Arthur Andersen throughout college and also bartended at night, paying his way through school and learning the minute details of the business world through the prominent firm. He was traveling, learning, and on track to become an associate partner, but when he graduated at age 20, his parents asked that he move to DC, where they had relocated to join his brother.

Ever the rebel of the family, he was determined to stay where he was, but he soon noticed that one of the firm’s accounts, Cable & Wireless, had an analyst opportunity open in the D.C. metropolitan area.

It was the early 1990s, and telecom was a hot industry. Drawn by the challenge of mastering software projects and developing cost-saving innovations, he took a large pay cut and accepted the position, automating the company’s invoice auditing process and getting his telecom engineering degree on the job. “I learned the ins and outs of telecom, peeled the onion back, and found my first $13 million dispute within the first eight months,” he recalls. “It was settled for $6.5 million. I was learning the game—that there’s a business world, an analyst world, and a real world in terms of how things get done.”

His time at Cable Wireless was served well by his experience at Arthur Andersen, which had taught him to ask “what if?” by challenging the way people do things and automating as much as possible. By the end of his three years there, he had advanced to the position of director, saved the company millions of dollars, and built a strong telecom network that included a man named Atul Jain, founder of software vendor TEOCO Corporation.

TEOCO was an engineering company that wanted to get into the product space, and at 23 years old, Sundeep began developing a vision for accomplishing it. Atul offered him an entrepreneurial opportunity, and Sundeep accepted, setting out to build a telecom division within the company. “I give a lot of the credit for my entrepreneurial flame to Atul Jain,” he affirms. “He really gave me full freedom to learn, fail, get up again, learn more, and lead.”

Four years later, after building the fledgling telecom division from nothing to millions in revenue, Sundeep decided he wanted to start a business from scratch after walking the floors of AT&T in Alpharetta, GA, where he noticed a young college grad doing tedious data entry work. Sundeep thought for a moment and then asked the VP overseeing the task, “what if?” What if he could find a way to automate the process entirely? This question ultimately led to the innovation of an optical-character recognition (OCR) scan/convert product called AIM Capture, which became the centerpiece of the company he launched in 2001 at the age of 27, NISCO (now Razorsight). “The technology positively disrupted the market for inter-carrier payment processing and reconciliation, and led to Tier 1 carriers becoming customers within the first two years of product launch,” he explains.

Sundeep then brought on Charlie Thomas, former CEO of Net2000 Communications, who first served on Razorsight’s Board of Directors and then became CEO in 2005, to take the company to the next level. “I genuinely believe that, when entrepreneurs launch startups, they must surround themselves with people who are much smarter than themselves,” Sundeep affirms. “This raises their success factor substantially. There was so much to learn from Charlie, but the most important lesson he taught me was how to scale a company and how to network among the best networkers.” Together they raised $20 million in venture capital, primarily from Sierra Ventures leading, and utilized their networks to expand the company. Sundeep’s wife, Sonia, also helped to guide the company to success, using her technical astuteness and engineering background to help solve some of Razorsight’s initial technology constraints while remaining thoroughly engaged in the education of their children and keeping their young family strong.

From its beginning, Razorsight’s culture was molded around the servant leadership model that Sundeep finds most inspiring. “If you can empower your employees to make the right decisions and lead together, and if you genuinely believe that you’re there to serve them instead of being served by them, you will be tremendously successful,” he avows. “To me, business should be personal and principle-centered. If you can’t have a quality personal conversation with the people you spend most of your waking hours with, you’re more machine than person. Everyone on the team has good ideas to give, and we embrace that. I don’t care what my title is, as long as we have a good nucleus of people who want to work with this company because they feel they truly have a role in leading it.”

When Sundeep attended a Big Data conference in Sundeep Sanghavi

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Dubai and felt the entrepreneurial itch to pursue that horizon, he began taking strides to leave Razorsight in good hands and ultimately departed in June of 2010. He recalls Charlie coaching him with his personal adage, “Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur.” With two young children at the time, however, he wanted to ensure he would have a reliable income while pursuing the dream of DataRPM. Thus, he also launched SearchRidge, a web and mobile application development company with a great revenue business model that provided funding for DataRPM. Then, in 2012, Sundeep retired fully from SearchRidge, sold his stake in that company, and is now able to focus exclusively on DataRPM and its future success.

Along with this professional focus, however, Sundeep has also taken great strides to continue to strengthen his focus on his family. “When I left Razorsight, my father reminded me that while my entrepreneurial dreams were great, I have to give equal time to my family,” he recalls. “It’s absolutely important to me that the core principles of family and togetherness continue to be a guiding factor in my life. I truly believe that the definition of success is family. Family is core to my being able to be a serial entrepreneur, and to anyone who wants to do something that requires tremendous sacrifice, because it’s what grounds you.”

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In addition to continuing the service-centered style of leadership that garnered praise and respect at Razorsight, DataRPM was also founded under the firm commitment to always reach for betterment. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, and one key consideration is not to repeat them,” Sundeep says. “You’ve just got to learn. I believe our society is built on the merit of second chances in life, so long as the same mistakes are not made again. So along with the principle of integrity, DataRPM is founded on learning from our mistakes.”

In advising young people entering the business world today, Sundeep emphasizes the importance of building upon one’s innate passion with solid skills.

“You’ll have the most success when you pursue something you truly love and then couple it with requisite deep skills,” he says. “It has a natural element to it— you’re more inclined to see it, breathe it, and live it. You can make money in any shape or form in this world, and there are so many people who work to put food on the table instead of working for the love of it. I’d like to see that change a bit where possible.”

Beyond that, he challenges all young people to rigorously challenge themselves. By asking “what if?” at every turn and on every day, we push society past the status quo and toward new solutions.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Kay Sears The Game Changer When Kay Sears graduated from the University of Richmond and returned home in Northern Virginia, she started to see her grandmother through new eyes. Kay would pick her up and take her to church. Afterward, the women, young and old, would go to the grocery store together, and then back to her grandmother’s house to talk.

“I began asking her about her career, and as I learned more and more about it, I was amazed,” Kay remembers.

Despite growing up in the 1930s and 40s, Kay’s grandmother went to college and became the regional Vice President for Stanley Home Products, where she managed hundreds of men through the 40s and 50s. While her husband had been very supportive, she certainly faced outside pressure and harassment, but she talked to her granddaughter about why she did those things and how rewarding they were.

“Hearing about her success really inspired me to be successful,” Kay affirms.

“I realized that, if she could do that in the 40s and 50s, I had no excuse not to go full steam ahead toward what I wanted to do.

She worked out of the home, breaking all these social norms that were gone by the time I entered the workforce, and she told me not to let anything slow me down.” Now the President of Intelsat General Corporation (IGC), a subsidiary of Intelsat, Kay is breaking social norms of her own as she redefines what it means to be a game changer in the world today.

Though Title 9 and women’s issues in the workplace were a hot debate when Kay entered the workforce, she actually feels that her professional career hasn’t been thwarted by a glass ceiling. Rather, the help and support of mentors along the way was a key element of her success. “When I get into a company, I just want to put 110 percent into it, so the concept of changing jobs was very hard for me,” she reflects. “My first job was with the government, and I’d probably still be there today if a friend of mine hadn’t helped me see that you have to change jobs to make big jumps in your career. The game changing advice I received was, when you stop learning, it’s time to leave. That remains my check today: am I still

learning something? Am I learning from my team, from the industry trends, from my challenges?”

Fortunately, at a company like IGC, the learning never stops. Its parent company, Intelsat, was launched in 1964 by the Kennedy Administration to provide critical telephone communications between the U.S., Russia, and other countries. It has since gone through many iterations and privatization, and while the military was always part of its customer base, but didn’t warrant its own division until 1999 when, in the wake of the Gulf War, the reliance of the U.S. military and its allies on commercial operators became more critical. The government’s capability in the arena was lacking, with considerable gaps in infrastructure in areas like the Middle East, so they were very dependent on satellite communications. Because Intelsat had a global mission and the necessary bandwidth, the U.S. government and its allies became increasingly reliant on it.

Thus, Intelsat formed IGC around that relationship and its unique challenges, including the unique kinds of contracting, its different sets of requirements, and its need for classified discussions. As IGC grew, it gained a more nuanced understanding of the government customer and began asking what else it could do for them, allowing it to grow into a full-fledged company with its own sales and marketing, engineering, operations, finance, and accounting departments, all geared at providing the commercial infrastructure necessary for the military to carry out its mission.

Today, Kay is passionate about leading IGC because of the subject matter itself. “I’ve been attracted to the technology from the moment I left college and first found out what a satellite was,” she says. “There was something about space—the fact that we build these satellites on the ground, put instruments on them, launch them into space, and can’t touch them anymore. They have to continue to work well and reliably, even though we can’t see them anymore, and there’s an intangibleness to that that intrigues me.”

Beyond this fascination, Kay is driven by the clien-

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tele IGC serves—soldiers. “These are amazing, dedicated people defending our country,” she says. “We contribute in a small way to their ability to complete the mission for national security, or to connect to their loved ones through satellite communications, and that’s very powerful for me.”

Kay’s own father was in the Air Force, and having grown up amongst people in uniform, the opportunity to serve them is personal. “I loved the fact that my dad was in the military,” she gushes. “He retired as a colonel.

We’d walk on base and people would salute him, and I thought that was so neat.” She was born in Arkansas, but the family moved to Texas, Taiwan, Northern Virginia, and Alabama, before her father retired and they settled in Northern Virginia when Kay was in seventh grade.

While difficult at first, Kay soon learned how to cope with the frequent moving, and even came to celebrate it. “It wasn’t that I didn’t get attached; it’s just that I got better at making friends when I got to a new place,” she recalls. “I got to see a lot of different places, and I think it builds a resiliency that can prepare you for other things in life. I still make friends easily and have the confidence to go off and do things on my own, and I have no problem walking into a room of strangers at an industry event or a conference.”

What’s more, the frequent moves were a bonding experience for Kay and her older brother. Tragically, her oldest brother died of spinal meningitis when Kay was eight. “That incident really brought our family together, especially my remaining brother and I,” Kay explains.

That culture of closeness continued as the family moved from place to place, and the siblings realized that, while other things come and go, their bond persisted. “He’s not just my brother, but one of my best friends today,” she affirms.

Once the family settled down in Northern Virginia, Kay’s father became deputy comptroller of the Smithsonian, and her mother continued her work as a real estate agent. “From my dad, I learned leadership skills in the work environment, and from my mom, I learned leadership skills in projects, as well as how to be a good friend, a supportive family member, and how to balance the things you want to do with the things you need to take care of,” she remembers. In addition to working jobs at donut shops, in restaurants, and at the beach through high school, Kay developed a big group of tight-knit friends in high school. “I was always the organizer,” she laughs. “My friends would say I was terribly bossy, but I got things done and helped people coalesce around a consensus. I was maybe a bit more of a risk taker than most of my friends as well.”

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This willingness to take risks soon helped Kay to make a character-defining decision that would change the rest of her life. It was college decision time, and her group of friends all decided to go together to two different schools. Kay had been accepted to both, but in the end, she decided on neither. Instead, she chose to branch off and attend the University of Richmond, where she knew nobody. “Though I made that decision consciously, I don’t think I knew why I was choosing to do it at the time,” she remembers. “But I was driven. I felt at that point in time that I needed to do something on my own for the first time. It reaffirmed the sense of independence I had gained growing up, and it helped me become more serious and focus on what I needed to accomplish in college.”

Even Kay’s social life became more serious. The school had no sororities on campus, so she joined the lobbying effort to change that, and once those efforts paid off during her junior year, she immediately assumed a leadership role in the transition. Kay became the first chapter president of her sorority, charting new territory and putting her organizational skills to the set. “It was tough because nobody knew what they were doing,” she says. “I had to run the meetings, and I had to run rush for the next year. It was a challenging but extremely rewarding opportunity.”

Academically, Kay started her studies in general liberal arts but quickly became interested in business and marketing, completing her last two years in the business school. As she took her courses, she dreamed of becoming an advertising mogul in New York City. “I’d look at all the cool advertisements that were coming out for great products at the time, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do,” she recalls.

Excited for her future career, Kay visited the office of career planning and placement early in her senior year, where students could sign up for interviews with various companies. She wanted to do some practice interviews, so she signed up for a number of slots at random. One of them happened to be an interview for a job as an auditor for major systems acquisitions at the Department of Commerce—something Kay knew absolutely nothing about. “I’ll never forget sitting down for that interview with Karl Schornagel,” she says. He explained to her that the Department of Commerce houses the National Weather Service and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, so they purchase an array of satellite, communication, and sensor systems to collect weather and oceanographic data.

“He described this whole network of weather and ocean data, and I found myself completely riveted,” she

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

remembers. “I would be working with the Inspector General to make sure those systems were being acquired correctly. I remember walking out of that interview and saying, ‘That sounds really cool!’ I started thinking about the technology, and all the ways society was using that data.”

Kay was given a second interview, in which she learned more about the job, and something just clicked.

She had had other interviews and offers by then, but she knew it was what she wanted to do. “I took it and loved it!” she says. “I could never have guessed I’d end up doing that, but something about the technology really appealed to me, and the whole advertising thing just flew out of my head. I was put on one of the big satellite programs, and the guy I worked under was very technical and a great teacher. The Commerce Department had had significant delays and cost overruns, and we were working to right the systems. I had the sense of doing something very valuable.”

At the same time, Kay took night classes at George Washington University to earn her MBA. She stayed there for almost four years, until in 1991, a former coworker who had taken a job at Comsat convinced her that communication satellites in the private sector were worth learning about. With that, she was hired into product development at Comsat. It was a bit technical for her taste, but thanks to advice from a mentor, she quickly moved into account management, where she could support customers, write proposals, and focus on sales and business development.

“I started in video broadcast and got to know all the broadcasters with high operational requirements,” she says. “They were very demanding customers—there could be no down time, and their satellite had to work perfectly, so it was a rapid induction into the operations side. I then moved over to the military and government, where the stakes were even higher. If our satellites failed, people could lose their lives, not just their advertising revenue.”

Staying on the sales and marketing side of the industry, Kay advanced from account manager to account director and then broadened the number and breadth of accounts she worked with. When she had her first child, she left Comsat to work as a consultant in the satellite field for a few years before joining a friend at a company called ATC Teleports. When it was purchased by Verastar, Kay accepted a position at PanAmSat in 2004, which merged with Intelsat in 2006. “Through that progression, the government customer became more important, and I felt an affiliation to go try to formulate special products and services around that customer,” Kay reflects. “So that became my area of expertise.”

Kay was a Senior VP at PanAmSat at the time of the merger and was picked to lead the sales and marketing division. Someone else was picked to be President, but when that individual left due to medical reasons in 2007, Kay thought it was her chance. They interviewed her in 2007 but chose someone from the outside instead.

“I was disappointed, but at the same time, I was a little relieved,” she says. “He came from the intelligence side of the business, and I learned a lot from him. I also needed to finish up some contracts we were trying to win and proposals we were writing, and I felt I couldn’t move on until I accomplished those things.”

After a year, however, the President decided to move on, so Kay raised her hand and said it was her time.

She knew the market, and while she was sales and marketing oriented, she had learned the finance, investment, engineering, and operations sides as well. Her dedication, commitment, and loyalty were renowned, and she was given the opportunity to put her skills to the test when she was named President in 2008.

“That was the first time I had actually asked for the job like that, and I’m so glad I did,” Kay says. “To serve the general manager function, where you have your hand in each part of the business, has been very exciting. I love looking for solutions, and when you move up in leadership, you realize you don’t have to be an expert in everything because you have a team behind you. With that in mind, I fluctuate between a consultative and directive style of leadership, depending on the area, person, and skill set I’m working with. My job is to set the vision of the company. I have to understand all of our initiatives, but I don’t have to own them all. I support others in owning them and put them in the context of where we’re trying to go as a company. And I love to foster collaboration in our workforce, encouraging our people to understand and think strategically.”

Since joining IGC, Kay has worked tirelessly to promote the public private partnership at the heart of its mission. Playing a complementary yet critical role to the government’s infrastructure, IGC continues to find new and vital ways to support the government’s architecture in space and aims to secure its legacy as an essential component in this architecture.

In reflecting on her own legacy, Kay is thankful for the mentors that played a critical role in her advancement. “I’ve had some really wonderful bosses, I have to say,” she remarks. “I’ve had wonderful mentors who believed in me and pushed me more than I pushed myself to expand and take on additional roles. People saw things in me and asked me to go for it, and I was lucky to have bosses who took the time to say, ‘What is Kay’s Kay Sears

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next step?’” In paying the gift forward, Kay makes a point today to mentor young women at IGC and is also part of an organization called Women in Aerospace, which gives her the opportunity to provide career guidance on a broader scale.

“It’s not just about support at work, though,” Kay affirms. “Could I have done what I do and be where I am today without my husband’s support? No way. Nathaniel has always encouraged me to take challenges and to go for it. He’s been rock solid.” When Kay and Nathaniel’s two children had gotten old enough that it was clear they would benefit from a parent at home, the Sears sat down together and looked at their careers. Objectively, Kay’s was on a more promising track, so Nathaniel volunteered to stay home. “I would never have become President if he hadn’t done that,” she says. “We make decisions together as a team and are a better family because of that.”

One of the many ways this manifests itself is through the Sears family’s philosophy of giving back.

They’ve set up a family fund, and they decide together as a family where they want to make charitable donations.

“We’re trying to show our kids that giving back is one of the most rewarding parts of life,” she affirms. It also manifests itself in a supportive spirit that allows each family member to take risks and try new things, like when Kay’s daughter, at the age of five, asked her mother to try kicking the soccer ball around with her. Kay had never played soccer before, but it became a true passion for her and remains so today, long after her daughter dropped the sport. “My team has been playing together competi-

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tively for over a decade now, and they’re some of my best friends,” she says. “And it’s led me to learn a lot about myself and the fact that one can pick up something later in life that becomes so meaningful. My counterbalance at the end of a really hard day at work is a really great competitive soccer game at night.”

Kay’s story, from satellites to soccer, is a testament to the importance of a lifelong willingness to learn, and she would advise this willingness to any young person entering the business world today. “Starting with your first job, the desire to learn has got to exceed the desire to succeed,” she says. “You have to know what you don’t know. If you only have a desire to succeed, you’re going to have a narrow idea of what success is. Don’t let yourself get narrowly defined; focus on your desire to learn.”

Beyond that, she emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, math, and science skills. “I would advise getting a technical base for what you’re doing by tackling the engineering understanding first,” she says.

“Then build the business and marketing skills on top of that. America is really losing its math and science expertise. We need more young people to have that as a base and to use it in their critical thinking process so we can continue to innovate, manufacture, and create things in this country. Once you have that math and science basis, you can become anything.” Just like Kay and her grandmother before her, it’s those who are committed to lifelong learning and who aim to set trends instead of follow them that prove to be the most powerful game changers.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Randolph Shapiro The Game Changer Randy Shapiro’s father was not going to be pleased.

His father, a holocaust survivor, knew better than anyone the meaning of hard work, and after spending the majority of his life fighting against the odds for a free and stable life for his family, all he asked of his son was to do well in school. Today, however, Randy was being called into the principal’s office for fooling around in class. As he waited for the principal to give him his punishment, he squirmed in his seat and thought of the disappointment that would surely be written all over his father’s face.

“We can’t have you goofing off in math class anymore, young man,” he was told.

“However, we understand you’re acting out because you’re not being challenged enough.

So from now on, you won’t attend your regular math class. Instead, you’ll be privately tutored by the head of the math department.”

Randy was shocked. His ¬teachers were right, however, and after successfully completing the most advanced math classes available to him during his tutoring sessions, he was able to graduate from high school a year early. “When I got to the University of Virginia, I was only seventeen,” he laughs. “At the time, the legal drinking age was eighteen, so I wasn’t even pseudo-legal. I didn’t mind though, and my father was certainly very proud.”

Now the Managing Director of Murray, Jonson, White & Associates, Ltd. (MJW), a tax, audit, and general consulting CPA firm serving the D.C. metropolitan area, Randy’s success in math may have come as a surprise to him in early high school, but he quickly got used to being a step ahead of the game. In addition to the local work they do for corporations and individuals, the firm of twenty-five employees recently joined The International Accounting Group (TIAG) in order to better serve their clients. “We have clients with assets and operations all around the world, so there’s a lot of activity back and forth,” Randy says. “We believe international taxation is an area in which we can continue to grow, especially as that area of expertise further differentiates us from competing local firms.”

Aside from their international work, MJW is

unique in that it strives to gain an intimate, nuanced understanding of each client so that service can be maximized. “We like our clients to know that when they call, they can talk to the partners at any time,” Randy explains. “Our firm is about knowing who we work with, and going the extra mile to be responsive.”

Many of the businesses the firm works with are family or privately owned, so it is imperative to the partners to be familiar with their clients in order to anticipate the next step. “A lot of the companies we work with are multigenerational, so it’s nice to know the family history in the fabric.”

Family has always been a priority to Randy, whether by knowing those of his clients or making time for his own. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1956, he openly admits his childhood was free from hardship; however, his parents faced more struggles than any human being should. Both parents are Holocaust survivors who came to America for a better life. His mother had been one of four children to well-off shopkeepers, while his father had come from a larger family. Although his parents did not meet until after the war, both their families were devastated to the point that only his two parents and two of his mother’s brothers survived.

After the war, his parents met and moved to Paris, where their first son was born. In 1952, they came to America. Although they knew little English, they were warmly embraced into Richmond’s Jewish Community, and after a few years, his father opened up a small, local grocery store. He was living out the American Dream, and because he was successful enough in his business to provide a comfortable lifestyle for his family, he strongly pushed education on his two sons.

His parents seldom spoke of their lives before moving to America; however, Randy felt a strong influence from their experience through the closeness of their community. Most of their closest friends were also Holocaust survivors, so many of his friends came from a similar background. Despite this strong influence, however, Randy experienced all the typical elements of

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an American childhood. He played on baseball, football, and basketball teams, and when he was not involved in schoolwork, he helped out at his father’s store. He never had a specific dream job as a child, yet his abilities in math became evident from a young age. He lent a hand in balancing the books at the family grocery store, and after graduating from high school in just three years, it seemed only natural that he would pursue a career involving numbers. He graduated from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce with a Bachelor of Science in Commerce.

During his senior year at UVA, Randy was interviewing for jobs with the rest of his classmates. Unlike his peers, however, he was not enamored of the “Big 8” accounting firms, mostly because of the stories he had heard from older colleagues about such large companies running their CPAs through the mill and viewing them as disposable. Similarly, he saw that in such an environment, it would be easy to be pigeonholed into only one area, thereby limiting his experience. With this in mind, he began interviewing with smaller firms and found them to be much more aligned with his own career goals and values. Around the time he was interviewing, Ray Hunt, a finance director at UVA who served on the State Board of Accountancy, put in a good word about Randy with a fellow board member, Carl Jonson, a senior partner at MJW. “I didn’t know Ray Hunt,” Randy admits.

“But I guess he knew about me from other professors.”

Hunt’s good words proved invaluable, as Randy was hired by MJW for an entry-level position immediately after graduating from UVA in 1977. The company turned out to be a perfect fit for many reasons, one of which being that it granted him the breadth of experience he had hoped for. “Two or three years after graduation, most of my friends who had gone to Big 8 companies were looking for new jobs,” he notes. “One guy had been working at a big financial institution and only had experience with auditing cash, whereas I was working on small companies and tax returns. I was able to learn the whole thing very quickly.”

In addition to learning quickly, Randy made an effort to pull more than just his own weight. Another MJW partner with a Big 8 background was in charge of audit quality control. Despite the partner’s credentials, he passed most of his work off to Randy, who shouldered the extra burden for the sake of maintaining the value of the firm’s work more so than to please his superiors.

Fortunately, his hard work once again kept him a step ahead, and after just five years with the firm, at the age of twenty-seven, he was made partner. “Carl Jonson pulled me aside and told me it was his decision to make me 138

partner,” Randy smiles. “I had earned the respect of the senior partners, which was a great feeling. I really believe that when someone can do the work, the responsibility and recognition will follow.”

At the time Randy was hired by MJW, he never saw himself becoming a Washingtonian, having spent the majority of his life in Richmond; however, the move turned out to be the best solution for him and his young family. His then-girlfriend had graduated from college a year early in order to follow him, and after he received his job offer at MJW, she enrolled at American University to work on her Master’s Degree in Public Administration. The two were married, and shortly after Randy was made partner, they had their first son. Soon after, their second son followed. Although they had set up arrangements for childcare, Mrs. Shapiro found she wanted to be home with her children; thus, she has worked and volunteered from home ever since.

While the firm’s growth has been slow but steady for the majority of its existence, Randy feels great pride in both his and MJW’s ability to maintain close relationships with multigenerational clients. “A client may have come in initially working with one of the founding partners, and has since been passed on to me,” Randy explains. “I think that sort of relationship comes from not only producing quality work, but handling those transitions well. I might deal with a client who is older than me, and a few years later that company has been passed down to someone younger than me. It’s a nice feeling to watch that process, and it’s also kind of funny that in those cases, I will know more about the history of their company than they do.”

Within twelve years of becoming partner, Randy was further promoted to take over as Managing Director, a role he deeply enjoys. While the idea of merging has been half-heartedly tossed around, Randy hopes to avoid such a move in order to preserve the independence of the firm. “I like being my own boss,” he laughs. “The only people I answer to are my clients, which is very attractive to me.”

Although he only has his clients to answer to, Randy understands that as a leader, he is responsible for the well-being of his employees. “I believe the most important thing in leadership is treating people the way you want to be treated,” he says. “I try to give people the opportunity to do their own thing and do it their way. I never want to micromanage a process, but I will step in now and then to make sure the quality of our product is never compromised.”

In addition to looking out for his employees, Randy leverages his position as a leader to give back. In 2009,

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

the firm celebrated its 50th anniversary, an especially significant milestone for an independent CPA firm. While such an occasion might traditionally be marked with a grand, expensive gala of some sort, the firm decided to refocus the Anniversary’s energy and money towards opening a scholarship fund. Unsure of how their clients would respond to the endeavor, Randy and his partners agreed to cover the $50,000 minimum deposit on the scholarship, should the firm’s celebratory fund-raiser prove unsuccessful. Fortunately, however, MJW’s clients responded strongly and generously. “We raised $70,000 in a matter of months,” he smiles. “We have checks rolling in, and we’re thrilled. I especially liked getting to see a new side of my clients’ personalities.”

The fundraiser proved to be an overwhelming success, and MJW has since been able to help three students gain a higher education, with the fund continuing to grow today. “I was always able to provide my kids with the necessary tools to get an excellent education, but I know how rare that is,” he says, paying tribute to his father’s emphasis on the importance of academics. “It’s especially rewarding when we get to meet those students and hear about the remarkable things they are doing.”

In addition to the scholarship fund, Randy has stayed active in supporting his alma mater, either through donations, working with his old fraternity, or being a regular at UVA football games. “We buy season tickets and have reserved the same parking spot near the dorms for years, so we always have great tailgate parties before games,” he laughs. “A lot of kids will come out and join us, some of whom we’ve gotten to know really well over the years.”

Randy knows he influences the education of more than just his own sons, so to the students he is support-

ing financially, as well as to all young people entering the business world, he stresses the importance of working hard and getting the most value possible from their education. “Find something you like to do that you’re good at,” he advises. “Don’t be afraid to try different things and take risks if things aren’t working out, and always believe in yourself.”

Looking back, Randy credits his own success to several mentors. Early on at MJW, the partners Carl Jonson and Jack White took him under their wings, and despite their opposite personalities, he feels equally influenced by both. “Carl was the one people feared, but I respected him. Jack, on the other hand, was the nicest guy you’d ever meet,” Randy explains. “I think I’m somewhere in the middle, although I think some people might say I’m too nice to run a business.” Randy credits this compassion to his father, who he recalls was always willing to help a loyal customer. “He had some customers who were living paycheck to paycheck, so he was always willing to give people a little extra, and let them pay him back when they could.”

Although his father passed away at a young age, Randy has continued his father’s legacy by encouraging hard work and education in his own two sons, who followed his path to UVA’s McIntire School and are currently working on their MBAs at Harvard Business School. “I take the most pride in my sons, and all they’ve accomplished so far in their lives,” he beams. “I often think of how proud my father would be. He knew no English, but he passed down this drive to work hard through the generations to his soon-to-be Harvard graduate grandsons.”

As each generation of the Shapiro family details, education is the centerpiece of greatness—a lifelong process that keeps its devotees always a step ahead.

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Robert Struble Potential Sitting in the guidance office as a junior at St. Francis High School outside Buffalo, New York, Robert Struble had plenty to pull his mind away from school. Raised largely by a single mother with two younger siblings, his family struggled to make ends meet. And although the days of welfare checks and food stamps were behind them, the impact of these struggles and the challenges they continued to face were ever present. Bob witnessed his mother give up her passion for teaching in order to take an unfulfilling and menial administrative position with the county government. Bob’s father, who suffered from alcohol abuse, had not been in the picture since he and Bob’s mother divorced a decade earlier. But just as Bob’s mother refused to be crushed by circumstance for the sake her family, so did Bob persist, and her example and her determined parenting infused him with the same perseverance.

Bob’s mother strongly encouraged education in her children, and his hopes for the future included college, but not beyond the insular world of upstate New York around Buffalo. Mostly he yearned for the money he never had. Male role models, few and far between, included his mother’s uncle Tony, an electrician and ex-marine. When Tony wasn’t traveling wherever he could find work, he was a stand-in father figure for Bob and his siblings, and for his mother’s sisters’ families too. Perhaps a trade was in Bob’s future. From the day he turned sixteen, he went to work bussing tables, cleaning toilets, and laboring in a plant producing commercial china. Even younger, there was never a shortage of snow to shovel in Buffalo, or grass to cut, or leaves to rake. Bob was used to working hard. What would his future hold?

How would he become a man and provide for himself and his future family?

Sitting in the guidance office that day, it’s hard to say what exactly was running through his mind. But across the desk in front of him sat his guidance counselor, Father Pat. Bob’s life experience, his mother’s example of hard work, her determination, and his natural talent and gifted mind represented a tremendous potential—

a potential that Bob wasn’t quite aware existed, but that Father Pat could see clearly.

“I knew I was a good student,” Bob recalls today. “I did very well in math and science, but I really didn’t have my sights set very high at all in terms of college. This was the 70s, and a lot of kids didn’t go to college, or they went to local community schools. My mother made education a priority with all of us kids, and I knew I would be going somewhere, but I couldn’t have known how far.”

Father Pat understood that Bob was meant for greater things. “He told me I should really be thinking about MIT,” Bob says. “I didn’t even know what MIT was. I had never been to Boston. I had never been on a plane. But I did apply to MIT, and I got in. Father Pat took an interest in me and opened my eyes to something I wouldn’t have considered otherwise, and that set off a series of events that altered the course of my life.”

MIT led to a broadening of horizons that took Bob to Europe, business school, and eventually to Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Now, three decades after that fateful meeting in the guidance office, Bob is the CEO of iBiquity Digital Corporation, a technology company responsible for the invention and implementation of HD Radio technology, which is approved by the Federal Communications Commission to upgrade AM/ FM broadcasting from analog to digital—a great improvement for broadcasters and listeners. Distinct from satellite radio, which is a new, nationwide service, HD Radio technology upgrades the local AM/FM stations most have listened to all their lives, delivering digitalquality sound and additional data such as artist information, album art, and real time traffic and weather updates.

“HD Radio technology is the digital upgrade to analog broadcasting,” Bob explains. “Everyone knows AM and FM radio. It’s the last remaining analog medium. HD Radio technology is how we will bring this much loved, 100 year-old technology into the digital age.”

This story of a young man emerging from a modest background who ultimately finds great success is a familiar one. Yet it is sometimes too easy to overlook the harsh

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reality of those beginnings, and also the features of the story that make such an experience so uniquely American. Bob persisted despite both financial challenges and family instability, and strands of family, mentorship, safety nets and meritocracy run through it all.

Bob’s parents divorced when he was six years old.

Bob’s father was a gifted engineer, but he suffered from alcoholism and he was unable to be responsible for his family. When his father left their lives, Bob, his mother and his two siblings struggled to make ends meet. As the oldest child, Bob found himself stepping up.

“I don’t think there was a conscious decision,” Bob says. “But the need to adjust to those circumstances as a young child certainly laid the groundwork for what would come later on. Over the next few years I assumed more of a leadership role in the family and elsewhere. I felt a real need to think about financial circumstances.

I started to work early and learned the value of money and dedication.”

Bob’s pull toward leadership expressed itself not only in work, but also in play. “It’s a bit different today with video games and social media,” Bob says, “but back then, kids were playing out on the street all the time. And we had the best fun playing sports and games and all kinds of stuff. It turned out that I was really good at organizing these things, and I really enjoyed it.” Bob wouldn’t just organize leagues and games with kids in the neighborhood; he decided to track statistics and other details of the games they played. He had natural ability in science and math along with his developing talent for leadership, and his friends followed him. They were happy to join in on activities under his leadership.

“I’ve always wanted to lead something,” Bob says.

“To run something. To direct something.” As a child, he and his mother led his younger siblings in making ends meet and being a family, and he led his neighborhood in sports and games. But as he got older, that drive evolved to a greater desire: a yearning to occupy that corner office and make the big decisions. And leaving upstate New York to go to MIT was the first giant step toward achieving that goal.

“My flight to Boston was the second time I had ever been on a plane,” Bob recalls. “You go from a very insular town to an international institution like that, and my goodness, everything opens up. We joke about it now, but I had never met a Jewish kid before I went to school.

Half my fraternity would be Jewish. I had never spoken another language. At MIT there were tons of foreign nationals. It was eye opening on a number of different levels. And there are kids coming from prep schools and from well-known schools in New York City. There’s that 142

moment of doubt: do I belong here? Can I do this? But if you’re truly at that level, you hunker down and you do that work. And it becomes a growth experience.”

Bob’s perseverance thrust him through MIT and to further broadenings. As a junior he studied abroad in London. When he graduated, his excellent grades together with connections he made in London led directly to being hired for a job with the Belgian chemical company Solvay. “The president of Solvay was an MIT graduate himself,” Bob explains, “and he was looking to build a stable of U.S. talent, with the ultimate goal of expanding their position in America.”

After a brief stint in Houston, Bob then relocated to Belgium for what would become two years as a young man in a French speaking office and country. And there he found his first postgraduate mentor. “He was this prince of a man,” Bob recalls, “named Pierre Ruelle. He was Belgian, but he worked all over the world. He was a great guy. He would have me over to his house for dinner. He knew I was struggling with the language, so every day he would take fifteen minutes to speak French slowly to me.”

A year into his two-year tenure at Solvay, Bob determined that given his resume and record, he could get into a top business school. He applied to Harvard Business School and several other MBA programs, all of which required recommendations, so he went to Pierre.

“This was a little dicey,” Bob says, “because although Pierre was always good to me, Solvay had wanted me to stay with them for a long time. And when I went to him for the recommendation, he was as resistant as I had expected he would be. But he was also baffled.”

Pierre told Bob that he didn’t understand. He reminded Bob that he was in an elite program, that the world was in front of him and that he would go on to do outstanding things. Why would he consider leaving?

“And then he said, It’s not like you’re going to go run your own company or something,” Bob remembers.

“He was saying it matter-of-factly, because in his part of the world, those opportunities are not open to you if you’re not from the right background. Living and working in Europe was eye-opening. What I wanted to do was very much in an American spirit and American character. That’s really an advantage we have over many other places, and as I heard him speak those words, suddenly a light bulb went off for me. That was exactly what I was going to do!”

With Solvay’s recommendation, Bob was accepted to Harvard Business School, where he would become a Baker Scholar, representing the top 5 percent of his class. After Harvard, he was recruited by another Buf-

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falo native, Rick Hadala, to join McKinsey & Company in Cleveland.

“When I was in school my goal was to come out and start and run a meaningful business,” Bob says.

“McKinsey is a world class firm where I learned so much and where I made lifelong friends. It is top shelf in every way. But I soon realized I didn’t want to be a consultant because I didn’t want to tell people how to do things; I wanted to do things.”

For Bob, McKinsey represented a postgraduate education and a way to pay down debt accumulated while at Harvard. He ended up jumping at close to the first opportunity that presented itself to work for a plastics company in Cleveland. But before long, the same Rick Hadala approached him again, this time for a position at Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the venerable manufacturing company which would eventually purchase and become CBS Corporation.

“Starting a small company was a longstanding desire,” Bob says. “As opposed to caretaking something that already exists, I have always wanted to create something.

At the time, Westinghouse was experiencing a lot of turmoil. Michael Jordan of PepsiCo was brought in to fix it, and Rick was one of the guys brought in for strategy. He called me up and said they were doing interesting and cool things. It was a great American name, so I came on.”

Bob worked mergers and acquisitions, helping selling off defense subsidiaries in the post-Reagan industry drawdown. “I kept pushing through,” Bob says, “but I never stopped expressing my desire to build a business.”

Finally the opportunities began to roll in, and with them the seed of HD Radio, the business he could shepherd from conception to execution. “They gave me a set of cats-and-dogs small defense businesses to run,” Bob says. “These defense technologies they were trying to convert to commercial offerings. Among these seven or eight different projects was digital radio.” Before Bob became associated with the project, several forward-looking broadcasters saw that with the coming digital age, radio too would need to transition in a way that made sense both for broadcasters and for listeners. Around the same time Bob was put in charge of the digital radio project, Westinghouse acquired CBS, and was becoming largely a media company. It was the ideal time for them to take a look at digital radio, and Bob was at the head of the project. In 1996, Bob and his team were called in to the CBS headquarters to present the idea.

“It was one of those seminal meetings,” Bob recalls.

“It was at the Black Rock Building, down the street from 30 Rock. All the CBS senior execs were there. Their strategy guys were saying that they’d looked at this, and radio

probably needed to go digital. I got called on, and said that the technology needed work but was full of potential, and that there was no reason it couldn’t work with a lot of effort. By the end of the meeting everybody agreed that we had to do it. They told me to drop or sell off all the other things I was managing, take this, and go make it work. I was CEO from day one.”

The technology development was completed, and what began as a project on the chopping block became a subsidiary. The subsidiary became a spin-off, and today, iBiquity has 100 employees and annual revenue over $30 million, with rapid growth forecasted. In a market that represents every single radio station in the country, HD Radio technology is on 2,000 radio stations out of 15,000.

Out of fifteen million cars sold last year, HD Radio technology was installed in three million. Of thirty consumer electronics devices sold each year, close to a million are HD Radio enabled. And the market opportunity outside the United States is two to three times the United States, itself. “We have a ways to go before we even approach a saturation point,” Bob says. “We started with nothing but an idea. And on the power of that idea and our collective efforts, the folks on our team have built a business that has impacted several different industries in powerful ways. And we are just at the beginning.”

The company’s tremendous success is due in large part to the thought-based company culture that Bob stresses. “Our average employee has an engineering degree or an advanced degree,” he explains. “We have a lot of very bright, driven and accomplished folks, and our team represents an exceptionally powerful resource. But in order to harness that resource, those smart people need to feel like they can speak up. There was an expression at McKinsey—intellectual hierarchy. The belief was that while there was a management hierarchy, there was not an intellectual hierarchy. When you get into a room and you’re trying to solve a problem, everybody’s ideas are good. If you really believe something and you can back it up, then as a first year associate you can tell the director he’s full of crap. This is the culture I try to encourage at iBiquity. And if it’s not happening enough, I tell people to challenge me more.”

Bob says that his single proudest accomplishment at iBiquity is not the business they’ve built, but the team that they’ve built together. “This is a tremendous collection of folks who are all dedicated, committed and talented,” he affirms.

And while building a company from scratch into a multi-million dollar enterprise at the cutting edge of radio broadcasting approaches a dream fulfilled for Bob, he doesn’t forget that, at the end of the day, there are things Robert Struble

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more fundamental. “Such as the basic needs of putting food on the table, paying the mortgage, and providing for the children I have with the love of my life,” he says.

Bob’s wife, Stephanie, is also a Harvard Business School graduate and a McKinsey alum. The first day she walked into business school, Bob knew he had to get to know her. “After twenty years, everything we felt at the beginning is still there,” Bob says.

His wife’s skill, training and business knowledge have also been immeasurable to Bob throughout his career. “Stephanie’s influence has been fundamental,” he avows. “She was the best sounding board early on. When I would go through ups and downs or doubts, I would ask why I left McKinsey, thinking of the more predictable career path I could have chosen. She would say no, that wasn’t me, so be quiet and get back to work.”

Bob and Stephanie’s eldest child is on her way to college next year, and his nephew is a recent graduate of Columbia, and Bob’s biggest piece of advice to any young person is the same that he emphasizes in his own family. “Don’t make the big mistake,” he says. “You can make a lot of mistakes, but you can’t make the big mistake. Make as many small mistakes as it takes to learn and to succeed. But don’t get in the car with the drunk

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driver. Don’t get pregnant before you’re ready. We were not great kids growing up. I can point to any number of different times when, by nothing else but luck, I avoided the big mistake.”

Today, Bob serves with his church in Catholic prison ministry once a month. Stephanie also devotes considerable time to church ministries, recently winning an award as youth ministry volunteer of the year. She organizes confirmation, takes kids on retreats, and leads other church activities. “We are lifetime Catholics,” Bob says, “and we find this work really rewarding.”

Bob’s greatest hope for his legacy is to be remembered as a great father, husband and friend. But he is nowhere near finished with iBiquity. “If we achieve our vision,” he says, “everybody in the country and around the world will be using our technology when they tune their radio dial. When you drive into a new city and find station after station of HD Radio programs, that’s us. If you rent a new car, you’ll see our HD logo. That’s the legacy there. I can tell my grandkids when they turn on the radio: that was our design. We did that.” Indeed, he did it because someone saw potential in him, and because he then believed enough in the potential he saw around him to turn it into real success.

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Paul Trapp Great Promise Paul Trapp knew it would be a hard Christmas for the Trapp kids that year. His once lucrative real estate investments had recently gone under, and though he knew bankruptcy was the best professional decision he could make at the time and that his naturally resilient nature would triumph soon, he knew they would have to go without that Christmas season.

Financially, it was the hardest time of his life—a reality that weighed heavily on his heart as he came home one day to find a FedEx envelope on his doorstep. Noticing that, curiously, the sender’s address listed his own, he opened the envelope to find a Christmas card. “I’ve been watching you all year long, and I like what I see,” said a note scrawled on the inside of the card. “You’re a good man and you do good things. Please accept this gift.” In the card, along with the note, was $1,000. “I was shocked,” Paul recalls today. “I played detective trying to find out who had sent it, but I ultimately had to give up.”

The legacy of that gift, however, lives on. Now the cofounder and CEO of FederalConference.com, Paul still keeps a running list in the card of every time he’s paid the gesture forward by giving anonymously. It’s a tenet that permeates his business, as well. Every year, the company allots each of their 50+ employees $1,000 to give away to charitable organizations of their choice, with a brief explanation of their decision. “We learn so much about our employees this way, and I believe they learn about themselves as well,” Paul remarks. “When we empower them to give back like that, it prompts them to really ask themselves the question, What’s important to me?

To see that goodness course through the veins of the organization and the positive outcomes it engenders is extremely rewarding.”

This approach to life was perhaps solidified in Paul by a mentor named Major General Ronald O. Harrison, who challenged him, as a leader, to find people of great promise and enable them to become. “That has stayed with me always,” says Paul. “At 53 years old now, I see my life not in terms of defining moments, but defining

people—those who saw promise in me and enabled me to become. I’m thankful for them, and I feel compelled, as part of my life mission, to give that back.”

Though there was a time he didn’t see it in himself, people have been seeing great promise in Paul and enabling him to become since he was a young boy growing up in Everett, just outside of Boston. His parents divorced before he was born, and his father was absent all through his childhood, but his mother worked hard as a waitress to raise him right. With an entrepreneurial spirit of her own, she owned three restaurants over the years, and that mindset rubbed off on her son. When he was ten years old and his mother said they couldn’t afford to go to the county fair, Paul decided to try his hand at raising the money himself by selling leftover inventory from her days as an Avon makeup saleswoman.

The young boy went door to door selling lipstick and perfume, and when he finished with one box, he came home for another. “It was my first adrenaline rush with sales,” he laughs. “I earned $100, and we used that to go to the fair and have a great time together as a family.”

Around that time, Paul’s mother married the man that would serve as his father figure—someone who would coach his Little League team, lead his Boy Scout troop, and stand in line with him to pick the fastest gokart. Despite the excellent examples set by his parents, however, Paul saw himself as a bad boy. “My grades were good when I chose for them to be good,” he recalls. “I was more concerned with beer and girls and riding around in muscle cars with my friends.”

Most people dismissed Paul as just another problem kid, but not his ninth grade English teacher, Ellen Barol. “She would constantly challenge me to be better, and her efforts bled outside of English,” he says. “I remember she grabbed me in the hallway once and told me I was a good man—that she saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. For some reason, even when I didn’t listen to my parents or anyone else, I listened to her. She made me see that I

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had potential—that I was a good kid who just hadn’t found his way yet.”

Paul thought he found that way when he saw a friend join the Army and completely transform into a fit, self-sustaining adult. He convinced his parents to grant permission for him to enroll early, and on the day he turned seventeen, he dropped out of high school and went away to basic training. The first thing he did was set about earning his GED, and once he earned his first paycheck, he bought a set of encyclopedias for Ms. Barol’s classroom.

Paul served on active duty until he was 20, when he decided to come home and join the National Guard. His parents had sold their restaurants and moved to Florida, so he joined them there and got a job as a correctional officer. After two years, he went back on active duty and became a recruiter, which keyed into his natural affinity for sales. “I was one of the top producing recruiters in the state of Florida for five years in a row,” he remarks. “This is because I asked every person what they wanted to be when they grew up, and I helped them chart a course to that goal.”

Toward the end of those five years, Paul happened to befriend the youth minister of a Catholic Church. He had seldom been to church since he joined the Army, but he decided to attend one of their meetings in the interest of meeting potential recruits. “I went with the intent to recruit them, but they recruited me,” he laughs.

“I fell in love with the feeling of offering guidance to those kids in that setting, and I started getting a fulfillment out of giving my time and my talent that I had never gotten before.”

Through that experience, Paul’s understanding of God evolved to become among the most character-defining forces of his life. Indeed, he was born in a Catholic environment, but for the first 25 years of his life, religion was more about showing up and going through the motions. “It was something I was supposed to do, not something I wanted to do,” he remarks. “I felt like I was standing outside a party where I could hear the celebration through the door, but couldn’t find the doorknob. I was there, but I wasn’t really there. But through discernment, relationships, prayer, and the times I felt there was more to life than what I was doing, I came to understand that what you are is God’s gift to you, but what you become is your gift to God.” Up to that point, Paul had used his God-given gifts the way many people do—for personal gain. But when he was challenged by close friends to do something more, it was like finding the doorknob. “They opened the door to the party for me and made me realize the gifts I had 146

been entrusted with came with great responsibility,” he remembers. “When I started using them for the benefit of others, I noticed a distinct change in my life. I was blessed more in everything I did. It felt better, cleaner, smarter, and more sincere.”

When Paul changed the code of conduct underlying his behavior, his entire life followed suit. For the first time, he understood that leadership was not about personal gain, but about taking care of those he was leading.

Living life for the betterment of others led him to pursue different goals and meet different people. Over the next several years, he transitioned off active duty, attended Army Officer Candidate School to become an officer, and pursued a higher calling to attend Seminary.

During this time, as he served in the National Guard and prepared to start Seminary, three instances of what might be considered divine intervention took place.

First, as a favor for a family friend, he agreed to serve as a temporary nightclub manager. When a gun was pulled on the dance floor one night, Paul’s path crossed with Steve Davis, the Catholic police officer who was initially skeptical of a nightclub manager who was bound for Seminary. “We bonded immediately through our mutual faith, belief, and values,” Paul remembers. “He’s like a brother to me now.”

Paul was out on the town one evening with Steve several months later when a second pivotal person walked into his life—an incredible girl named Kimberly.

And shortly thereafter, Hurricane Andrew hit Southern Florida, prompting a humanitarian deployment that would cause Paul to miss his Seminary start date. “Kimberly stole my heart and I knew I wanted to marry her, so I opted out of the seminary and found myself in need of a job,” he remembers. “I became a cop in Central Florida and was named Police Officer of the Year, and I like to joke that I went from the backseat of a police car at age 15 to the front seat of a police car within a decade.”

After multiple deployments, Paul decided to return to active duty and finish his military career. As he thought of other ways to supplement his Army exit strategy, in addition to delving into the real estate market, he considered building a business—one that would service a need that he, himself, had personally experienced. While in the Army as a senior leader, he often found himself planning events, which launched him into the convoluted process of government contracting. “First, I’d need a venue, so I’d request proposals from hotels,” he recalls.

“I’d have to review bids, select one, justify it, award the contract, lock it down, and then repeat that entire painful process over and over again for speakers, charter buses, caterers, what have you. So I thought, what if there were

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one company I could contract with that could do all of that for me and send me an invoice at the end? It would simplify my world immensely.”

Paul had taken this need to big companies who said they could solve all his problems, but because they weren’t event planners by specialty, they were really only making things up as they went along. Conversely, real event planners were generally too small to undertake the magnitude of event the Army required. “I realized that, if I could build a company where I could commit to a project, bring the talent to the table to deliver on that commitment, pay the bills, and wait 45 days to get reimbursed by the government, I could offer a very valuable service,” he remarks. “When I see a situation like that, my business mind immediately kicks in. It’s a creative process—if I see greatness and beauty in something, I consume myself with it. I’m addicted to the entrepreneurial mindset.”

He saw greatness in the idea, and with that, he partnered with his best friend Steve and launched FederalConference.com somewhat casually in February of 2006—an opportunity for them to make additional income through a home-based business in the evenings.

By May of 2006, Paul found himself filing his real estate venture for bankruptcy but committed to restructuring and paying off every cent of his debt. Thankfully, good ideas catch on quickly, and FederalConference soon caught fire. “I knew there was a need for the service I could provide, and the more we applied solution to that need, the more it was like adding gasoline to the fire,” he remarks. “And as the company matured, I came to realize that the art we had used to launch it—gut feelings, intuition, people skills—requires science as well, like systems, processes, and attention to detail.”

The company’s development has trended positively thanks to the exceptional working relationship between Paul and Steve, who have been each other’s sounding boards, support systems, and partners in combating crime ever since they met. As cops, they had each other’s backs on the street. In the National Guard, they deployed overseas together and spent 14 months working side by side in that capacity. Each was the best man in the other’s wedding, and each helped the other carry his mother’s coffin to the grave. And now, with the communication skills they developed through church peer ministry programs, they share ideas and work through problems constructively in the best interest of the business. “We put each other on pedestals and have mutual respect for each other,” Paul affirms.

As FederalConference has come of age as a company, putting on 3,000 events a year and enjoying an as

tounding 24,830 percent growth from 2009 to 2012, its success ties directly to its exceptional customer service.

“In a sense, challenges are opportunities because they give us a chance to really do what our clients are paying us to do, which is to provide expertise and act as a buffer against the painful minutiae of event planning,” Paul says. “You can burn through government resources trying to find what’s right, or you can just hire us to bring in the right solutions and people. Indeed, our true success is the people and culture of our company, so everything we do is focused on that.”

Because of this goal, and because of his natural affinity for seeing great promise and enabling it, Paul is somewhat of a benevolent father figure in business. “Our company is very much about taking care of people and helping them along their journey in a very positive and personal way,” he affirms. “I like to know people and what their goals and needs are. I see great promise in them, and I help actualize that, whether it’s monetarily or through career or personal development guidance. In this sense, we are very much a community at FederalConference. I have 53 people, from those more advanced in their careers to those just out of college, and I really feel it’s my responsibility to help enable each one. This might mean losing people along the way when their paths diverge from ours, but we never stand in anyone’s way.”

Paul’s work advances the betterment of others not only through the company culture he’s created, but also through the fruits of his labor. Indeed, money has never been an end, but rather a means to other ends—ends that touch lives in ways that are as thoughtful as they are powerful, and as immediate as they are lasting. One such end was the construction of a science lab for a Catholic school in a low to medium income area, furnished with burners, microscopes, and skeletons. Others, anonymous but just as poignant, are chronicled in the Christmas card.

In advising young entrepreneurs entering the working world today, Paul stresses the importance of authenticity. “Be true to who you are,” he says. “I blazed my own path differently than everyone else did. I didn’t fit into traditional leadership or academic leadership because I was much more about following my natural passions, and other people, in turn, seemed to follow that.

Also, learn as much as you can everyday—not just about your world, but about everyone else’s worlds too. Choose the hard right over the easy wrong. Be open. Care about your people. Pay it forward.”

In following these principles through his journey through life, Paul often remembers a time when he served in active duty under Colin Powell. “He taught us Paul Trapp

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that the day people stop bringing you their problems, is the day you stop leading them,” says Paul. “Maybe they’ve realized you don’t care, or that you’re incapable of solving them, but either way, it’s a failure of leadership.” Now, this life lesson is printed out and taped up next to his computer screen to remind him of his role every time an

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employee walks into his office. “This is where I’m supposed to be right now,” he says firmly. “Everything I am, everything I’ve been trained for, every person that invested time or money in me, has prepared me for this. This is my great promise, and I’m here to answer that call.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Tom Weithman Swimming With the Current By the time Tom Weithman graduated from high school, he was more than ready to quit swimming. He’d been in the sport since he was five years old, and while it had been an integral part of his childhood, he craved something new.

Years later, after joining the Water Polo Team at Notre Dame, attaining two Masters Degrees, launching a venture capital fund, and starting a family, he was pushing his young daughter in a jogging stroller on his daily run, when he felt a twinge of pain in his left knee where cartilage had been removed years before. A veteran marathoner, he knew he had to find a means to cross-train, so after nearly three decades, he jumped back in the swimming pool. “The first lap, I felt like I could have been in the Olympics. The second lap was a little bit harder, and by the third lap, my arms felt like someone had handed me a piano,” he recalls. “It was a struggle, but it got me back into swimming, and after a while, I was enjoying it like I used to.”

While fitness has always been a big part of Tom’s life, his difficult return to swimming reminded him that, in both business and in life, persistence is the key to success. “If you’re swimming well, nothing feels better; but when you’re swimming against a current, and everything seems out of place, you have to be honest with yourself about who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish,” he says. “That’s why it’s so important to do what you’re passionate about, so that even in hard times, you know you’re right where you need to be.”

Today, Tom is the Vice President and Managing Director of CIT GAP Funds, a family of seed and earlystage investment funds functioning as an operating division of the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT).

In the late 1990s, CIT had created the business plan for a venture capital fund, but had been unsuccessful in launching the project. A few years later, however, Tom was able to secure the management commitment and the funding to move forward.

By 2005, they had made their first investment. Today, eight years later, they’ve done over 80 deals around

the Commonwealth, with equity and near-equity investments placed in Virginia-based technology, life science, and clean tech companies. “We are a double bottom-line fund, so we invest for outsize returns for our fund and co-investors, while achieving significant spill-over economic development benefits such as new company and job creation and new tax revenue streams for the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Tom explains.

Tom describes CIT GAP Funds as a $10 million fund, but unlike conventional venture models, the exact size is more difficult to characterize. CIT GAP Funds is an “open-ended” fund benefiting from an annual infusion of cash from the Commonwealth of Virginia, taking in other money from private and federal grant sources as well. Proceeds from CIT’s $50,000 to $100,000 investments are then returned to CIT for reinvestment. To date, CIT GAP Funds has placed more than 80 investments and realized returns to the fund from 10. For every dollar of Virginia money invested, CIT GAP Funds has leveraged more than $13 of private money into the portfolio.

Tom attributes his success in developing CIT GAP Funds to a supportive management team at CIT, to his ability to attract top talent to staff the fund, and to his own willingness to meet the challenge of the project head on—a trait he developed as a child growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania. His greatest role models and mentors have always been his parents, who, from an early age instilled in him his work ethic and optimism. Tom’s father worked as an economist for the state, while his mother worked as an administrative assistant for the Social Security office in their town. She left her job prior to the birth of Tom’s older brother, returning after the two boys began high school. “My admiration for my father grows with each passing day,” Tom says. “He was a tremendous guy—very patient, understanding, and bright. He could have done a million different things with his life, but he chose his career based on what interested him.” Tom’s paternal grandfather had only achieved a sixth grade education, but he always encouraged his children to do well

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in school, so that Tom’s father was the first of his family to go to college. Because of the financial hardships his father had faced as a child, he always took great pride in his job, house, and family, and he passed these core values on to Tom and his brother.

Tom’s mother was always a very strong person and was indisputably the athlete of the family, having played basketball and field hockey throughout her years growing up. “She suffered a series of illnesses and dementia in the later part of her life, but she always confounded doctors with her incredible reserves of strength and energy,” Tom smiles. Both parents had a great sense of humor and encouraged Tom and his brother to be responsible and inquisitive. “I remember my brother and me walking with my mother, and we saw two men working in the street,” Tom recalls. “My brother asked what they were doing, and my mother replied, ‘I don’t know, why don’t you go ask them?’ So we did. Both parents always encouraged us to take initiative, responsibility, and ownership, and to always be curious.”

Because his parents instilled responsibility in the two boys from an early age, they trusted their sons to make wise financial decisions as well. Every night, their father would put his loose change in a jar that the boys could help themselves to as they pleased. “My parents certainly were not wealthy, but they trusted us not to take all the money at once and make bad decisions,” Tom says.

“My father told us to take it if we needed it and to leave it if we didn’t.” To make his own money, Tom mowed lawns and delivered newspapers until his freshman year of high school. He and his brother even had a door-to-door lemonade delivery service, which they launched out of frustration as cars kept driving past their stand.

As a child, Tom wanted to become an archeologist, having been inspired by Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind, published in 1921. As he grew older, his family’s shared love of politics and history, as well as his leadership experience in high school as president of his junior class, led him to consider a career in public service. When it came to school, he was naturally driven and exceptionally adept at English and history. “Ironically, science never interested me much, but now that I work with the life sciences and technology so much, I wish I had paid more attention,” he laughs. “I’ve always been interested in personal dynamics—how groups of people relate, and what motivates them.”

Tom attended the University of Notre Dame for undergrad, where he attained a Bachelor’s of English degree. “I wandered through several departments before deciding on English during my junior year,” he says. “If I could redo college, I might have been more focused, 150

but I would never trade my liberal arts education. It laid the foundation for life-long inquiry and learning. It serves you well in whatever you do.” For most of his days as a college student, he considered going to law school, though most friends and relatives who knew him well advised him against it. “The thought of it made me queasy,” he laughs. “Yet even if I had taken the law route, I probably would have still found myself ultimately doing what I’m doing now.”

At Notre Dame, Tom took several business classes, which he found he both enjoyed and did well in, so with the encouragement of a professor, he went straight to Michigan State University after graduating to attain his MBA. After finishing his Masters, he landed his first job at IBM working in subcontract procurement. In that capacity, he spent four years mastering federal acquisition regulation before transferring into a sales role at IBM, where he stayed for four more years. “I enjoyed sales better, since I like working with people, but I was only using half of the skills I had acquired, so I didn’t feel challenged on an analytical level,” Tom explains. “Around that time, my father passed away, which had a profound effect on me. I knew I didn’t want to be at IBM, and while it was financially counterintuitive, I decided to move in another direction. I guess that I wanted to be like my father and spend my time doing things I really cared about.”

It had been a tough decision to leave IBM, but Tom knew in his heart it was the right thing. He decided to change his path by returning to school and enrolling at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government to attain a second Master’s degree. For a while, Tom contemplated pursuing a doctorate and embarking on a career in higher education. He finished his Masters in one year, but stayed to do research at the Harvard Business School, where he found he was, in fact, a businessman at heart.

In 1997, Tom accepted a position as Regional Director with CIT, which was a very different company from what it is today. “We had no assets under management, but we were working consultatively with a number of startups and setting up relationships to help grow technology companies with grant money,” he explains. A few short years later, however, Weithman launched GAP Fund I. “I like the hands-on element of what I do,” he affirms. “I think I relate well with other people. I’m more articulate than others, and I get restless. I need the continuous problem-solving variety that managing a portfolio of early stage tech companies demands.”

While leadership has always come naturally to Tom, his leadership style has evolved over time to focus more on empowering those who work for him. “I trust

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people,” he says. “I give them the latitude to make decisions, and I like to foster a collaborative environment. I want the people I work with to feel professionally and personally fulfilled.”

Today, Tom credits much of his success to his wife, who always inspires him. “She knows exactly what she wants and finds a way to get there, whether it’s a job or a house,” he laughs. “She’s definitely been a stabilizing force in my life. She’s very good at seeing things I wouldn’t necessarily see, which makes us a good team.”

Through a combination of vocation and avocation, Tom has fulfilled his desire to work in public service. As Managing Director of CIT GAP Funds, Tom guides the fund’s efforts in fulfilling its economy-building business plan. On a personal level, Tom is on the Board of the Alzheimer’s Association National Capital Area Chapter. “I want to get everything I can out of each day,” he avows.

“I want to try to make the most of life and to be as aware as I can of what’s going on around me, which also means setting aside the time to give something back. If you’re not doing that, you’re just taking up space.”

Today, Tom takes great pride in the tremendous team he works with. “I work with incredible people ev-

ery day,” he says. “It’s a very strong investment team. My professional goal has always been to help people grow, and with this team, it goes both ways. I get as much from them as they get from me, I’m sure.” Above all else, though, Tom’s legacy lies in his family, which now includes a daughter and young son. “Watching them grow brings me a huge sense of accomplishment,” he says. “After I’m gone, I want my kids to think about me and laugh. We have a lot of fun together, and I hope one day they’ll think of me as the root of their values and decision making.”

In advising young people entering the working world today, Tom stresses the importance of following one’s passion. “Pay attention to what’s inside,” he says.

“Your gut will always be your best guide. It’s not one thing that makes you happy, it’s a basket of things—for me, it’s been work, family, fitness, and service. We look for a set of activities to work on in each aspect of what we do, which gives us the balance to find happiness. By recognizing our true passions and sources of happiness in this way and giving priority to those elements in what we do professionally and personally, we will always ensure that we are swimming with the current.”

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Charles White Strength of Mind “What’s the worst that can happen?” Charlie’s wife, Tricia, asked him. “I mean it. Let’s discuss the worst case scenario and decide if we can handle it.”

Charlie sighed deeply and mulled over all the ways his plan could backfire. His company, Business Leasing Associates, Inc., which had been thriving just a matter of months before, was suddenly on its deathbed after losing all its funding from a savings and loan company in Buffalo, New York. The company was bleeding money, and it seemed there were just two options: declare bankruptcy, or tough it out.

Already, Charlie had decided that he would take sole responsibility for the company, since his other two partners still had young families and no other source of income. He, on the other hand, had military retirement and a part-time consulting job with a Department of Defense national security entity, which, coupled with his wife’s government job and the fact that his children were already finished with college, put him in a reasonably stable position.

“I’d spent 21 years in the military, so I’d made an awful lot of tough decisions in my day,” he says. “But this one was different because it would affect my family. On one hand, if we pulled the company through this, we could be extremely successful again. On the other, however, we could fail and find ourselves in serious trouble. We could lose everything. The bank could come after us for all our personal guarantees, but Tricia assured me that if that happened, we could start over, living off my federal retirement and her federal job. Once we realized we weren’t afraid of the worst case scenario, we decided we could handle anything.”

Together, the couple decided to work through the company’s troubling times, and while it took nearly a decade for Business Leasing Associates, Inc. to regain its footing, it is now thriving once more, proving that Charlie and Tricia’s leap of faith had been the right choice. Through careful analysis, strong values, honor, integrity, and trust— character traits cemented in Charlie through many years in the military—he, along with several new business partners, was able to pull his company back from the brink and

translate strength of mind into a sturdy future for both his family and his company.

Focused primarily on equipment leasing, the company has broadened to encompass commercial loans and other financial instruments and is built on a large following of faithful customers, some of which have returned for their services forty times. “I’m doing this primarily to help people that can’t get financing anywhere else,” he says. “Each of our leases has a story, and I know them all. I understand them and their families and their problems. Before we even approve a deal, it becomes very personal. For the past several years, banks have not been giving a lot of loans, so it’s become incredibly hard for small business owners. I’ve taken great joy in helping people who deserve to be in the business and just need a break.”

Oftentimes, banks will refer potential clients to Charlie and his partners, knowing they’ll offer whatever help they can. The typical client for Business Leasing Associates has a credit score under 740, but seems to have the direction and integrity to pay them back in the future. Because of this distinct business philosophy, Charlie has gained extraordinary relationships that have spanned generations.

“I had a client who was a dry cleaner that worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week,” he recalls. “We financed twelve different acquisitions for him, which allowed him to start his own business and start making a profit. Interestingly enough, he’s become so successful that now he’s one of our investors.”

While the company has seen countless success stories, Charlie has in turn learned to deal with any obstacle the company faces, from stolen equipment to clients running into trouble halfway through the lease, and with several clients even declaring bankruptcy. “In situations where the client falls into trouble, we try and help them out by stretching out their payments,” he explains. “If we think they can make it, they can continue to pay us under the new terms, knowing someone would need to give them another start. I’d prefer to have the client pay me less on his leases over a longer period of time than stop paying me all together. For this, I don’t add on extra charges or

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late fees, because at the end of the day, we just want our money back. “ Over the last 29 years, Business Leasing Associates, Inc. has created almost $8 million in leases to approximately 5,000 clients, most of which are found around the Beltway of DC. The company boasts a distinguished reputation, to the extent that all of the investors involved heard about it by word of mouth. “We’ve never had to ask for a single dollar from any of our 100 plus investors,” he explains. “They invest in relationships, both with us and with other investors.” In turn, the company sees to it that the investors are treated extremely well. “If there’s a $10,000 lease, we go to five investor accounts, including our own, and take $2,000 from each to fund the project. As the payments come back in, they get back what they put out, and we pay 8 percent compounded, which can be a huge return over time.”

Since the company’s founding in 1983, little has changed, giving it a unique charm as well as a classic sense of accountability. Charlie has kept his rates consistent over the past thirty years, and many of his investors have been with the company for decades. What really sets the company apart, however, is how Charlie views himself as a team player in his arena, rather than a competitor. “I have no competition,” he says. “I try and partner with anyone in the area working in the same business. If I know a potential borrower has sent an application to me and the other guy, I’ll call that company up and see if he wants them. Sometimes we split deals, and sometimes I refer deals out if it seems more specific to them. I believe we are all experts, and there is certainly enough work to go around, so there’s no reason not to work together.”

Charlie grew up in Mathews County, Virginia where his father was a county treasurer for 26 years, and his mother was a teacher. His parents seemed to know everyone in the small community of 9,000 residents, where few people left and even fewer people came in. His mother had been very strict with Charlie, who was an only child, seeing that he studied rigorously and never missed a day of school.

Even in his adulthood, he recalls his mother being the boss of the family, constantly keeping him and his father in line.

“Before my father died, he told me, ‘You and I have always gotten along well. I’ve never had to discipline you. I think we both did exactly what your mother told us to do, and it worked out just fine,’” Charlie recalls with a chuckle.

The only time Charlie did not listen to his mother was when she signed him up for piano lessons in fourth grade. He liked the lessons enough at first, but after freezing at his first piano recital, he decided he wanted nothing more to do with the instrument. His strong-willed mother, however, insisted he continue to take lessons throughout high school, but because Charlie was so adamant to never 154

perform again, he refused to practice and ended up spending most of his lessons chatting with his teacher. “I took one lesson a week for eight years, and managed to not learn a single thing,” he laughs. “My mother knew what was going on, but she insisted I keep taking the lessons in case I changed my mind.”

Charlie found early on that he was not an exceptional athlete, so he decided to invest his free time in working, beginning in seventh grade by sweeping the school floors at night and putting together bikes and doll houses for the local toy store. During his senior year of high school, he worked for a butcher, waking up at 4 am to drive to Richmond to pick up meat and deliver it to a local butcher before going to class.

With the encouragement of his mother, he did extremely well academically, winning the State Debate Championships his junior year. He graduated second in his class and was one of seven from his high school who went on to pursue higher education, enrolling at the College of William and Mary. Because he had spent time in high school working as a page in the Senate of Virginia, he decided to study law on a six-year track. He never wanted to ask his parents for money, so he joined the ROTC, worked as a waiter throughout undergrad, and got a gig as a park ranger for the final two years of law school.

Charlie’s first case as a law student involved a horrible two-car traffic accident, where he served as the park ranger investigating officer. He testified on the case before the Federal Magistrate, and each party was represented by a judge because a later civil case would depend on the outcome of the hearing. Much to his surprise, he was called by one of the judges a week later, who offered him a job based on his presentation of the Park Service’s case and his demeanor during cross examination. He passed his bar exam and seized the opportunity, working in a small practice in Williamsburg, Virginia for a year.

Just before graduating law school, he married Tricia, his college sweetheart, and the couple planned on settling down in Williamsburg. The Army, however, had different plans for Charlie, as he was quickly summoned to active duty to pay off his ROTC two-year obligation. Begrudgingly, he closed up the law practice and packed his bags for Okinawa, followed by an airborne unit in Vietnam.

Despite his initial resistance to the military, however, Charlie found he appreciated the Army much more than he anticipated. He was amazed at the quality of leadership and the feeling of unit dependence on each other. If nothing else, he quickly realized just how naive he had actually been. Early on in Vietnam, his unit captured a significant volume of Chinese weapons, including distinct Chinese hand grenades. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

came in to disarm the weapons so they could be transported for military use, but several of the grenades had handles that were too degraded from moisture to be tampered with, so the EOD left them in the jungle. Being the curious young soldiers they were, Charlie and his comrades decided to try their hands at disabling the grenades once the other units had left. “We were successful, but I think back on that and shudder,” he says. “I now keep one of those grenades on my desk to remind me of the stupidity of youth.”

He had been lucky that day, and all the other days he served in Vietnam, but the illusion of immortality that so often came with youth was quickly shattered for him as he watched many of his comrades perish. He witnessed Sergeant Larry Pierce, the leader of his patrol, throw himself at a mine, hoping to deflect it and protect his unit. He was successful in saving his men, but he was a few seconds too late to save himself. The image haunted Charlie for the rest of his life, though he was able to honor the Sergeant’s memory by writing him up for a Congressional Medal of Honor.

By the time he returned from Vietnam at the end of his two-year obligation, Charlie found he had changed his mind about military life. “I was very inspired by the commonality of purpose, the camaraderie, and the team effort,” he recalls. “It convinced me that I was working with some very good people, and I decided to sign up for another two years in the Army working in personnel in the Pentagon.”

Consequently, after his second two years, he was invited to earn his Masters in International Relations, accruing another three-year obligation, which he went on to fill as the Chief of the International Affairs Division in Heidelberg, Germany. When that assignment was up, he returned to America to teach at the Judge Advocate General’s School at the University of Virginia for another three years.

After ten years in the Army, Charlie was sent to the First Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas to serve as the Chief Legal Advisor. During his time in Texas, he worked for three distinguished generals that solidified his decision to stay in the Army indefinitely. “I always took the position that I was a soldier first and a lawyer second,” he said. “I had the privilege of working with two three-star generals who each started out as a Private E-1. One General would climb down into a grease pit to chat with a soldier who was fixing the military truck, getting his hands covered with oil too.”

After attending the Army War College, he returned to Europe for another three years of service, and then came back to the states to work in the Department of Defense in the Pentagon, where he served as an Inspector General for Intelligence Operations for Secretary Casper Weinburger.

“We looked over all the Military Services and the National Security Agency, ensuring that the government wasn’t spying on U.S. citizens,” he explains. “We were trying to de

termine if the military was collecting the conversations of Americans. That was in 1984, and is especially interesting given that this same issue is all over the headlines today.”

After 20 years in the military, having graduated to the rank of full colonel, Charlie found he was ready to retire, but with little direction of what to do next. Charlie Murray, who had become Charlie’s best friend in the Army, had retired shortly before him and gone into financial planning in Tampa, Florida. During a visit, the two sat down at a restaurant to discuss their options. “Charlie suggested we go into business together, and I figured I’d accomplished college, law school, and the Army, so maybe it was time to try something totally new,” he says. Over dinner, they brainstormed what their company would look like and drafted out their business plan on the back of a Tequila Willie’s cocktail napkin. Several months later, in 1983, they started Business Leasing Associates, Inc., and where joined by their third partner, Joe Fellona. “It was a new challenge,” he laughs. “We had no idea what we were doing, but it was a lot of fun.”

The fledgling company enjoyed enormous success within its first six months. Charlie handled the administrative side of the business, while Murray took over financials, and Joe covered sales. They opened offices in Annapolis, Tampa, and Alexandria, bringing in countless clients. Over time, they started getting ninety transactions a month, so they brought in funding from Palmetto Savings and Loan out of Clearwater, Florida, which encouraged them to open seven more offices to take in a larger volume of orders and to strive for $6 million a month in business. Five months later, however, Palmetto Savings and Loan was bought out

by GOLDOME from Buffalo, New York, who suddenly decided to terminate all funding. “They gave us only $1 million to shut the whole operation down,” Charlie recalls.

“We had $300,000 going in the pipeline that had been approved, but they cut us off.”

The team of three decided their only option was to keep their reduced funding efforts solely in Florida for the time being until they could figure out what to do with their other streams of finance. But then, the Challenger space shuttle blew up tragically, and there were no activities or tourists arriving around Cape Kennedy. For the next two years, the company was stagnant, with no new transactions until the disaster passed. “It was a hard time for everyone,” he says. “Hotels and plumbers went out of business. A third of our leases went delinquent. We had to move to brokering our deals and from profit margins of 13 percent to only 4 percent.”

The three partners quickly realized their company was not going to survive under its current circumstances, so they began searching for the next step. They took long Charles White

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walks along the docks of Alexandria and Annapolis, feeding the ducks and trying to imagine every possible solution. Over time, the best answer became obvious: the other two partners would have to leave and find new ways to support themselves and their families, but Charlie would stay.

They closed down all their offices except the administrative branch in Alexandria, and for the next eight years, with his wife’s blessing, Charlie focused on paying off the outstanding leases, without taking on any new business. “That was a very tough time, but I learned a lot about business,” he recalls. “We made some mistakes four or five times, but eventually started regaining our footing. I picked up several individual investors and managed to pay off the original investors in Tampa, which allowed me to continue. Fast forward to today, and we’ve made a full recovery, having accrued close to 120 investors and doing over $9 million in loans at any one time.”

Looking back on his success in the company and his ability to pull it back from the brink of disaster, Charlie credits his experiences in the Army for having prepared him to make tough decisions and serve as a leader. “I worked for a three star general in Europe who would say, ‘Don’t do anything stupid, and don’t let me do anything stupid.’ He was fair and no nonsense,” he recalls. “He taught me that if you’re willing to do the grunt work and take direction and advice from other people, people will follow you. You need to treat the people following you well and trust them, because at the end of the day, they are the ones watching your back and the business.”

While the Army gave him the greatest lessons in leadership and hard work, Charlie also developed a false sense of trust in his colleagues, so that he learned the hard way just how aggressive the business world can be. “In the military, if someone says they are going to be somewhere, they will be there. When they say it, they mean it. The

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system is built on trust and integrity,” he says. “That’s not how the business world operates, though. People might say something is a done deal, and that they just need this, that, and the other from you, but once you jump through those hoops for them, they act like they don’t know you, and you lose your end of the deal. It’s something I think everyone transitioning from the military to the business world experiences, and it can be very disheartening.”

Despite these cautionary words, however, Charlie is quick to acknowledge that Business Leasing Associates, Inc. was exceedingly fortunate to have business partners like Carol Fuhrer, Debbie Pearce, Hilton Smith, and others, who were integral to developing the vision and supporting the goals of the company. “If it were not for their ethics, hard work, and dedication, both to the company and to our clients, success would never have been possible,” he avows.

After nearly 30 years in the business, the partners are now passing the torch to another set of dedicated professionals at One Degree Capital—individuals who share the same values, dedication, and work ethic that were present at Business Leasing Associates, Inc. “They have the same zeal and innovative spirit to help others that we started with,” Charlie says. “And they have one huge advantage over our generation: technology! It takes them less time to do the same tasks, which makes for even better service.”

With this focus in mind, Charlie is committed to bringing integrity and honor to his work—the kind that have been shaped over a lifetime of transformative experience and thoughtful reflection, and the kind that acknowledge trust as the fundamental building block of success.

“The key to any successful partnership, be it in the military, in business, or in marriage, is the ability to trust and lean on each other,” he says. “That takes strength of mind, and there must be trust in the common goal. With those things, no challenge is too great to take on.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Bradley T. Williams At the End of the Day Brad and Mary, the co-owners of the Alternative Board, felt confident they would have no issue securing capital investment for their fledgling company. Their business model was strong, and both had extensive experience in their respective consulting fields.

Much to their surprise, however, their initial attempts to attract funding were met with considerable resistance, and all for the same reason: the business partners and co-owners were married.

“A lot of people objected to our starting and running a company together,” Brad now remarks. “I can see how it would be difficult for other couples, but Mary and I have a deep belief in the separation of church and state. Business is business. A huge transition takes place between when the lights turn off in the office and when they turn on at home at the end of the day. When we disagree, we do so robustly, because it’s a conversation that must be carried out and that can’t follow us home. We also agreed early on that, in the event of a disagreement, whoever has the best business argument will win, and we’ve managed to stay true to that.”

To other couples, determining the “best” business argument may seem too subjective to guide the two out of a quarrel, but both Brad and Mary are adept at putting their client’s needs first, and thereby trust each other to make the best choice for the company.

“More often than not, we balance each other and help turn each other’s weaknesses into strengths,” he says.

“She’s very risk-averse, while I’m risk assumptive, so she’s taught me to make calculated risks, while I help her take more chances.”

While others may have doubted the couple’s ability to cooperate, The Alternative Board West FairfaxAlexandria—their second major consulting firm—is flourishing. As a membership-based organization that provides advisory boards and strategic leadership coaching to business owners, Brad and his team specialize in promoting growth and success for their clients.

“The best way to explain what we do is through an analogy,” he says. “Imagine you’re a business owner trekking through the jungle, and you suddenly find yourself stuck in quicksand. Your first reaction is to call your friends and family for help, but they respond, ‘Well, we told you not to do this in the first place, so good luck getting out.’ Then a business coach might walk by, and they say, ‘Do this and that, and you’ll find your way out,’ but that’s the extent of their involvement. Finally, board members walk by, and when they see you in trouble, they jump in the quick sand to try and help.

You think, ‘Great, now we are all stuck,’ but they respond, ‘You know, we’ve been through this before. We can all put our heads together and get out of it.’

“Our practice is truly focused on leveraging other business owners who understand at an intimate level the trials and tribulations of running a business,” he continues. “Whether it’s a start-up company or a large corporation, the conversations are all the same; the only difference is the scale and complexity.

We use that dynamic to empower and enable other business owners to really and truly begin to flesh out how they carry their business and move it forward.”

The Alternative Board was officially launched in 2010 after Brad and Mary reformulated their consulting company when they realized they were drawn to helping other business owners advance their companies, as well as their lives. “It gave us process and procedure to bring to our portfolios, as well as the freedom to augment the new concepts with the consulting experience we had gained during the previous decade,” he explains.

Today, The Alternative Board is based in Northern Virginia and currently advises 28 businesses and plans to add ten more in the next year.

When the company was formally launched in 2010, their portfolios were populated with businesses of all sizes; however, Brad and Mary are currently trying to focus on companies with between $2 and $85 million

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in revenue, and with a minimum of ten employees.

“We prefer mid-size to larger clients because the conversation tends to be more robust and more complex, with greater opportunities to work on things that are really meaningful to the business owner,” Brad explains. “With larger businesses, the challenges become more multi-faceted, and that’s our specialty.”

When Brad puts boards together for clients, they tend to cap at eight members, since that size allows everyone to contribute and have their issues discussed. The board will then meet on a monthly basis for a four-hour, highly structured and facilitated meeting. Mary and Brad also offer an hour of executive coaching to the owner each month, which is where the focus often shifts to the company’s strategic plan and they have an opportunity to sort through the advice collected from the company’s advisory board meeting. “The underlying component is the strategic planning process, but it has to be put into action,” Brad explains. “This is where we are most actively engaged in order to help business owners accomplish their objectives.”

It comes as no surprise to Brad that he would have found a career in consulting because, after spending most of his formative years traveling around the world, he grew to understand and respect the unique nature of people as individuals through his exposure to so many different cultures. He was born in Troy, New York, while his father was earning his Master’s Degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute through the Navy. After his father graduated, the family, along with Brad’s older half-sister and younger brother, began moving continuously, so that they found themselves in a new place every two years, including Spain, Japan, Hawaii, California, Texas, and Virginia.

Brad recognized early on the benefits of being exposed to so many new cultures and forms of life, but his expanding worldly knowledge was shadowed by the harsh reality of bullying that followed him to each new school. “I use to be a very small, timid guy, so when they inevitably came to rough me up at the start of a new school year, I’d try to hide from them,” he says. “One day, though, in San Diego, something snapped in me. Enough was enough, and then I became the bully. I’d walk right up to the biggest kid in the class and pick the fight.”

As his own bullying worsened, Brad fell in with a dangerous crowd during his junior year of high school. He hardly thought twice about the hardened teenager he became until one night, he and his 158

friends roughed up some people in Georgetown. “In that moment, I snapped again and realized I didn’t want to be this person anymore,” he says. “It was my most shameful incident, and it bothers me even today. In many ways, I think it drove me to be as dedicated as I am to helping the people around me advance within their own company or personal life.”

From that day on, Brad put his bullying ways behind him and instead focused on his studies, which he’d maintained good grades in, as well as focusing on golf. When he was twelve years old, his father bought him a set of golf clubs, and the two would spend long afternoons playing together. It allowed Brad quality time with his father while also giving him an escape from the bullying drama at school, which was echoed by unrest at home, where his parents’ marriage was slowly crumbling. “I believe golf, more than anything else, exhibits life,” he comments.

“It’s managing disappointments and wins, and it’s such an accurate compass to how other people react.

If they are club throwers or cheats, that’s how they will behave in their daily life too.”

When Brad graduated in 1969, he chose the University of Texas for its strong business school and warm climate, as well as the distance it granted him from his home in Virginia, where his parents had recently divorced. He came to college hoping to become a professional golf player, but quickly found many on his team dwarfed his talent, so he decided a more realistic path would be to focus on his degree. He considered going into law, since an uncle he admired was a lawyer, but once he dug deeper into his classes, he found he was vastly more interested in business and finance.

During his time as an undergraduate, Brad started working part time at Zales Jewelers to pay for his tuition. He enjoyed his work and found he was learning a great deal from the company, so he joined them full time after graduating in 1973 with a degree in business. During his several years at Zales, he was frequently promoted, so that he ended his career with the company as a Director of Sales in Dallas, Texas. “During that time, I learned more about different profit structures and how to really run a business than I could have picking up a PhD from Harvard,” he laughs. “The guys I worked with were brilliant. We had several layers of profit built in before the diamonds even hit the stores. Every Saturday, the entire executive team would come in and review store purchase orders to ensure proper inventory mix predicated on regional needs.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

In 1979, Brad decided to leave the jewelry business, having had enough of the long hours and the company’s general aversion to the technologies that would have expedited their work. He transitioned over to the University Computing Company, where the business was having trouble selling a complex software solution to banks. “They brought me in for support to leverage my marketing experience and try to figure out why they weren’t getting traction on the solutions,” he says. “When I came in, I didn’t try to learn the system from the ground up because I had no software experience. Instead, I learned what value they were attempting to deliver, and through that, I found they were targeting the wrong customers.

They had been trying to sell it to the Chief Information Officers, when fundamentally it didn’t solve any of the problems directly associated with that role.

From there, we could see the real beneficiaries were the people running the retail and commercial banks.”

When Brad made that breakthrough for the software system, the product took off, which in turn led to his own success. He became the top producer and salesman within his branch and spent eight lucrative years with the company, until he decided to step away during a company merger. He’d enjoyed his years there, but what had especially spoken to him was the consulting side of his work, rather than the computing. With that, Brad decided to join another computing company that was focused more heavily on the consulting side, so that as he gained more responsibility within his role, he also acquired more consulting firm clients. “It was a huge mistake not to integrate all the various solutions available from the myriad number of acquisitions made over the years, because multiple sales representatives from different divisions of the same company were calling on the same decision maker at the targeted financial institution,” he explains. “This created a burden on our client’s time and obfuscated the true value of the solution we offered. To address this, a sort of gatekeeper role was created in order to identify mission critical issues that had an enterprise-wide impact for the bank, and match those issues to the various services and products that our company offered so that the decision makers could make a cleaner, more educated choice about the most effective approach to solving the problem.”

In 1998, Brad started dating Mary, who, at the time, was the Senior Vice President at Bank One, running a $1.5 billion student loan portfolio for the bank and serving as its senior education lobby

ist on Capitol Hill. The couple began sharing notes on each other’s profession, and Brad realized there was a huge marketing opportunity for a firm to offer complete service to banks with regards to student loans. “I convinced Mary to put together a marketing organization and consulting firm that offered all these services to banks in the business who were not getting a lot of traction,” he says. “We take care of the headache for them, give them all the gravy, and take a small percentage of that.”

The business model proved to be so successful for the couple that both left their jobs to fully engross themselves in their joint business, Strategic Resource Alliance, LLC. Over the next decade, they grew the business and were enjoying their joint career, until two events left them with almost nothing. The first was the government’s decision to exclude the private sector from participation in the federal student loan program, which the pair foresaw, while the second was the crash of the capital markets. “Our big failure was strategic planning,” he admits. “We thought we understood what was happening from a regulatory point of view, but no one could have foreseen the market’s collapse in 2008. We failed to put in a contingency plan, which is something we now understand very well and bring to our clients.”

In the wake of the Alliance’s downfall, the couple decided to rebuild their consulting firm into a company that would reach more customers and have a strong enough foundation that they would be better prepared for future fluctuations in the market.

With that vision, their consulting firm was launched as The Alternative Board in 2010.

As Brad continued to move through his consulting career, several fundamental lessons about business have remained constant forces of direction when guiding his clients. The first, and perhaps most pressing, is to hold on to the company’s creativity.

“As soon as a company becomes tactical, it gets in trouble, because it puts its head down and grinds out only what it knows best,” he explains. “When that happens, they lose the creative and innovative edge that made them good in the first place.”

The second lesson he carries with him is to always put the needs of the customer first. “There can be such a lack of humanity in so many different business scenarios, but that can be avoided if you always keep your client’s interests in front of your own.

When you do that, you’ll always win,” he says. “If there’s a gray area about a right or wrong decision, we default back to our business’s fundamental values of Bradley T. Williams

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keeping our client’s interest in front of our own, and inevitably we feel that we make the right decision.”

From a leadership standpoint, Brad has never been afraid to admit his weaknesses—a willingness that has ultimately made him a stronger leader. “I’m extremely lucky to have Mary as my business partner, because we play off of each other in a very beneficial way,” he says. “Most times, my style is to be very friendly and collaborative, but when the pressure is cranked up, I tend to go into a command and control role, which is a weakness. Mary is more fluid, however, and more adept at staying consistent through times of high and low stress, so she becomes a very solid counterweight for me. “

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At the end of the day, Brad recognizes that he and Mary work so well in their business as well as in their marriage because they fundamentally enjoy what they do, and they love doing it together. “We have such a passion for helping our clients succeed that we often come home after a long day and discuss how to better our company over cocktails,” he says.

“In that relaxed environment, it’s not work anymore, because it’s fun for us. We love to talk about our clients and celebrate one another’s success. At the end of the day, I don’t think I could ask for much more than that.”

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

Vennard Wright My County, My Community When newly re-elected Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker, III asked Vennard Wright to join his IT department, Vennard didn’t even have to think about his answer.

“I just said yes,” he recalls today. Vennard, who was working in the private sector when he was tapped, came to the position with more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry. “I felt like it was time for a change,” he says, “and I had immense confidence in the County Executive as a person and a leader.” But there is a deeper reason that Vennard was so fast to join Prince George’s County. “It’s my county,” he says.

“It’s the county I grew up in and the county I live in. I saw the opportunity to come in and change the way people saw it. And while there have been a lot of challenges that we’ve had to work through to get to where we are today, I feel thrilled to have this opportunity to help change my community and move it in the right direction.”

Vennard joined the team as Deputy to the Chief Information Officer of Prince George’s County and is now the CIO, himself. His considerable experience and loyalty to his home county combine with a powerful drive to understand and then harness new technologies, resulting in a success that is not only professionally fulfilling, but also personally meaningful. “I like not being able to perfectly predict what I’m going to face tomorrow,” Vennard says. “Technology is constantly changing, and changing rapidly. Working with technology gives me the benefit of working in new areas in different ways.”

Vennard has never been one to rest on his laurels.

If everything is running smoothly and only needs to be maintained, then he is not your guy. “I am always looking to improve,” he says. “And in Prince George’s County there was a lot of room for improvement. Going into this I thought that if we achieved half the things I wanted to then we’d be rock stars. Well, we’ve achieved that and more. It’s very exciting to be a part of it right now.”

Traditionally, the role of Vennard’s office was strictly to keep basic information services functioning. “We were just supposed to make sure that the phones were working

and that the network was fine,” he says. “But the way I view it is that IT has changed a lot. At this point it’s about seeing where you can innovate and where you can make things more efficient. So we’ve started to take on that role.”

Despite low expectations for the role of his office, Vennard has made great strides in using information technology to improve city services. In one case, he has consolidated all the city service numbers to a 311 call center. When a Prince George’s County resident encounters anything from a downed tree to a pothole, he or she can dial one number and reach the appropriate office. The county’s 311 call center received hundreds of thousands of calls last year. The result of another such initiative is increased transparency, as Prince George’s County is in the process of moving all of its data warehousing online and making it public. Any digital record that the county processes will be transparent and available for the public to view online.

These proactive efforts are only the beginning, it seems. “One of the biggest complaints the county receives from the business community is that the permitting process is very difficult and can take a long time,” Vennard says. “So we have combined the functions of permitting, inspections, and enforcement into a single agency.

We’ve put new systems in and retrained our staff, and we went live with this new agency as of July 1, 2013.”

But the most impressive and promising project initiated under Vennard’s leadership is a pilot program launching this summer that will allow students in Prince George’s County to participate in STEM curricula (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) at other schools, virtually, through the cloud. Partnering with Lockheed Martin and Cisco, the county will provide three schools with the technology that will allow students at any one of the schools to participate in classes and discussions at any of the others.

“Many students today who are growing up in Prince George’s County have had an experience similar to mine,” Vennard says. “They haven’t necessarily seen people close to them who have been successful in the sciences and in

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math. They don’t think they can go into IT or other science and technology fields. This STEM cloud resource will be accessible by the students at school and at home.

They will be able to communicate with the teachers, ask them questions through the cloud, and get answers, either privately or shared with other students.”

The pilot will be tested by paid interns this summer and will be implemented in three county schools in the fall. “It is much larger than a mere IT project,” Vennard emphasizes. “It has the potential to change the way our schools operate. And it could help bring cohesion to the STEM subjects, which are traditionally taught separately.

We’re trying to apply a project-based model and work in all the disciplines across the board.”

Beyond the classroom, Vennard sees another possible benefit. “We’re also creating career pathways with Lockheed Martin and Cisco,” he says. “Companies like these plan five years down the road, and one thing they’re saying is they don’t have enough people to fill these opportunities when they win them. We want to think of Prince George’s County as a possible pipeline for recruits.

I think that’s something that is necessary not just for this county, but across the country as well.”

Vennard’s own experience growing up in Prince George’s County informs his dedication to the current generation of students going through the public school system. “My parents always told me that I could go as far as I wanted to,” he says. “That I could do anything I put my mind to. But I’m not sure I believed it when I was a kid. In the neighborhood where I grew up, most people didn’t do very well. I didn’t have the benefit of knowing someone who worked in an office or who was an executive. Everything in my career has been something that I had not seen before.” Exposing children to technology and to the corporate partners of the program, Vennard believes, will have significant and lasting impacts on the county he grew up in.

While Vennard’s parents weren’t executives, he credits them with imparting his most deeply held values and his work ethic. When Vennard was three years old, his mother married the man who would become his father. “That man adopted me when he married my mom,” Vennard says, “and he has been my father ever since. I have to give him a lot of credit. He spent 35 years working for the Postal Service, and I don’t remember him ever taking a single day off. When he retired, he had over a year’s worth of sick leave. He had that kind of work ethic. No matter what he did, he never made excuses.”

Vennard’s mother would substitute teach from time to time, but mostly she raised Vennard and his four siblings. When Vennard started working his first job at 14 162

years old, his mother insisted that he save at least a quarter of his earnings. “I don’t save that well today,” Vennard laughs, “but it was an invaluable lesson in discipline and managing money.”

Vennard’s professional life is not the only avenue through which he gives back to his community. An athlete in high school who at one point played semi-professional football and tried out for the Ravens, Vennard has now coached high school students in football and track for seventeen years. “There are many parallels between sports and business,” he says. “You have to work hard, and sometimes you lose. It really is about the dedication you show. You practice, you apply yourself to the fullest, and that usually produces a good outcome.” But to Vennard, coaching is about much more than an analogy to business. “In many ways,” he says, “I care much more about coaching these kids than I do about any awards I might receive in the course of my professional career.”

Students that Vennard has coached have received full scholarships to schools like University of Missouri and the University of Memphis. “You put so much into these kids,” he says, “and hopefully their future is changed.

They don’t have to pay for college, and at that point their possibilities are endless.”

Vennard, himself, attended the University of Maryland at College Park. He worked all four years at various government agencies to pay his own way, and when he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business, he went to work for the Academy for Educational Development.

He married his wife of seventeen years, Janelle, at around the same time. It was at her encouragement that he transitioned from an administrative, fiscal position into IT. “I told my supervisor Frank Beadle De Palomo that I wanted to switch to IT,” Vennard says, “and he gave me the opportunity to do so. He changed my titled to Operations and Technology Coordinator, and that’s how I got my start.”

After a brief stint as a freelancer, Vennard joined DIGEX, a provider of internet services that was later acquired by WorldCom. Then he transitioned to Electronic Data Systems (EDS), an information technology equipment and services company. “One of my supervisors at EDS was Rob Holder,” Vennard says, “and he was the one who brought me in as Chief Technology Officer. At EDS there weren’t many minorities in positions of influence.

He was one of the few. He really took me under his wing and made sure I’d be successful.”

While at EDS, Vennard was approached by a political headhunter. Vennard knew it was for a political campaign, but it was only after he was a few interviews in that he learned he was just a couple more interviews away from becoming Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief technol-

Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7

ogy expert for her presidential campaign. Shortly after, he was interviewing with the former Senator, herself.

“She started by saying flat out that we weren’t going to talk about technology in the interview,” Vennard recalls, “because I knew way more than she did. We talked about the books I’d read and the movies I’d seen. She was getting a feel for me as a person. I got the job, and it was great to work with her. She’s down to earth, personable, and so intelligent.”

After the campaign ended, Vennard returned to EDS and then moved on to CherryRoad Technologies, but before long, he would realize that he still had an appetite for politics. He learned that Rushern Baker was running for the Prince George’s County Executive seat, and Vennard reached out to him. After organizing a fundraiser and advising Baker on technology issues, Baker appointed Vennard to the county’s IT department.

“There are certain things I still want to accomplish,” Vennard says today. “I do want to see the organization mature to the point where it’s not dependent on a single person to operate smoothly. We’re getting there for sure.

There was a time when I couldn’t take an afternoon off because something would pop up that would demand my personal attention. But now it’s gotten to the point where things will keep operating. When I get to the point where I no longer have a major impact, I think that’s when it will be time for me to move on.”

In retrospect, Vennard didn’t consider himself a natural leader until leadership was demanded of him. “I always thought I was a natural loner,” he says. “I was never a follower, but I didn’t think I had the desire to lead. It’s

not something I set out to do, but now I realize that I do have the ability to motivate people to see my point of view.

Sometimes I find I need to take a step back to let a discussion take its course, without tipping the scale one way or another. For some things I need to step back and let them develop as opposed to forcing them the way I think they should go.”

In advising his own four children who are approaching college-age, and the youth of today who are just graduating, Vennard emphasizes the importance of flexibility. “Youth today need to keep their creativity,” he says. “I think the youth have a lot to teach us. As we get older, we’re trained to lose our creativity and go with the status quo. But I think that ability to keep that flexible thinking and to see things a different way will benefit us.

Young people need to keep their options open. Especially in this world, you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Always be willing to embrace whatever comes.”

The final piece of Vennard’s giveback to his county and community involves his children, as well. Each holiday season around Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year, Vennard, Janelle and their four children make about 100 lunches that they distribute to the homeless in Prince George’s County. “It’s important to us that our kids see people who are less fortunate than us,” he affirms. “It’s a reminder that there are people out there who don’t have what we have. That if your circumstances were different, this could be you. It’s a reminder to be grateful for what you have, and that you have a responsibility to help people—in your county, your community, and beyond.”

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Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford was the first U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. He was killed just two days into the war on March 23, 2003. Spc. David Emanuel Hickman was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on November 14, 2011. The Washington Post on December 17, 2011, said Hickman “may have been the last” U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. After reading an article about Gifford and Hickman my sister, Gloria, was inspired to write the following poem.

From Gifford to Hickman

By Gloria J. Bernhardt From Gifford to Hickman…and all those in between, You fought bravely amid chaos and dangers unforeseen.

Twenty-one guns have sounded, the rider less horse walks on.

Fond memories are remaining. A nation’s child is gone.

Sons and daughters; fathers, mothers -- broken hearts intertwined.

Hugs and kisses; their successes – major milestones left behind.

Your selfless gift -- a life laid down; for fellow soldier, family, land.

Duty called -- call was answered -- no greater love hath man.

“I’m getting taller. I lost a tooth. I got 100 on my test!

Miss your pancakes and your tickles, goodnight kisses were the best.

Who will answer all my questions now? I’ve important stuff to learn!

You said you had a big surprise on the day that you’d return.”

“I talk to you at bedtime -- after lights go out at night.

I told Jesus that I miss you…sure wish you could hug me tight.

When Grandpa says I look like you, Grandma starts to cry.

I’m mad that you’re not coming home…I need to say goodbye!”

From Gifford, to Hickman, through every soldier who has served, Liberty’s fruits are savored and freedom is preserved.

We live freely due to soldiers, willing to support and defend Our Constitution, our country -- against enemies ‘til the end.

Sons and daughters; fathers, mothers -- broken hearts intertwined.

Hugs and kisses; their successes – major milestones left behind.

Your selfless gift -- a life laid down; for fellow soldier, family, land.

Duty called -- call was answered -- no greater love hath man.

“I had a dream the night before…you smiled and walked on by.

When I awoke, I thought it odd…it seemed like a ‘good-bye’.

I couldn’t put my finger on the dark cloud that remained, When the phone began to ring…I knew my life had changed.”

“I questioned God, ‘Why MY child? Why do I have to lose?’

I imagined His response would be ‘If not your child, then whose?’

Your bright life flashed too briefly… seems He only takes the best.

From Gifford to Hickman

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I’m thankful for the time I had. For that I’m truly blessed.”

From Gifford to Hickman and every warrior who has passed, The price you’ve paid bought freedom, but will we make it last?

Your last breath drawn for citizens in this country and abroad Are we worthy of such gifts is known only but to God. Sons and daughters; fathers, mothers -- broken hearts intertwined.

Hugs and kisses; their successes – major milestones left behind.

Your selfless gift -- a life laid down; for fellow soldier, family, land.

Duty called -- call was answered -- no greater love hath man.

“My world stopped spinning…I couldn’t breathe! Lord, how can I go on?

My days are all one midnight…but they say it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn.

I can hear you say, ‘I’m proud of you! I know that this is hard.’

What do I do without you here? What dreams do I discard?”

“I miss your laugh. I miss your smell. I even miss our fights.

No more messes. No embraces. It’s more ‘real’ late at night.

I saw you in a crowd today; but you vanished in the throng.

Wishful thinking changes nothing! I know my “rock” is gone.”

FOR Gifford, FOR Hickman…FOR all the fallen in between, You’ve trudged through shadowed valley and joined heroes’ ranks unseen.

Upon freedom’s altar, we sacrificed our daughters and our sons.

Empty boots stand at attention. The flag is folded. Your mission’s done.

© 2014 Gloria J. Bernhardt. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinted by permission.

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Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 7