Moe Jafari is the Founder, President and CEO of HumanTouch, LLC. Jafari has more than 20 years of experience in the Federal IT industry and has spent the last 15 years developing HumanTouch into a market leader. The firm was ranked eighth in Government IT Services in the Washington Business Journal’s Top 8 firms, and was ranked 31st in the fastest growing firms in Washington Technology’s Fast 50 list.
Jafari, who serves on several community, school and local swim club boards and is on the board of Decorate a Vet, was the first in his family to graduate from college. The executive spoke to WashingtonExec and talked about why he became an entrepreneur, the next big thing in Federal IT, his opinions on the LPTA environment, his involvement with STEM, and more.
WashingtonExec: Can you give us your background? What made you want to become an entrepreneur and get out there on your own?
Moe Jafari: I felt I could do things a little differently than how they were being done and I really did not like a lot of the corporate structure or reporting mechanisms I experienced in the past. It became pretty evident that it was a put up or shut up type of scenario for me.
WashingtonExec: What would you say is something that was unexpected that you found as you started your own business?
Moe Jafari: The rollercoaster! Everyone hopes it will be sunshine and daisies. Struggling and getting through the early stages of starting a company can be very difficult financially as well as mentally. I think the mental struggle is harder than the financial struggle. Although, trust me, financially it’s tough as well!
WashingtonExec: Why did you name the company HumanTouch?
Moe Jafari: We really looked at all the components of the industry we’re in, from federal contracting to the IT sector. At the end of the day, it’s not about me or what I do. It’s really about the people that we hire and the impression that they leave. And that’s really what it amounts to: the human touch.
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“At the end of the day, it’s not about me or what I do. It’s really about the people that we hire and the impression that they leave. And that’s really what it amounts to: the human touch”
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WashingtonExec: What do you think will be the next big solution for federal IT?
Moe Jafari: We are definitely changing how we’ll do business in the future. Some groups in the field would call the change social engineering, but I’m looking more at social government; or a social federal marketplace. That’s an area that I see holds a lot of opportunity. It is the convergence of all these different ideas, from big data to mobility to socialization. Social government will bring all those different components together, to make that convergence happen.
WashingtonExec: What exactly do you mean when you say socializing the government?
Moe Jafari: It’s all about how the government interacts with American citizens. Interactions from business to government, government to consumer, government to government—it’s bringing all those different pieces together to make it work for the everyday person. HumanTouch would like to be the force behind bringing these gaps together. You have the issue of big data, but when is that data going to be useable to the average citizen or to the researcher, the educator, or to the student? Those are the things that are a little amiss. So it’s a little bit of all those components. That’s what I mean by social government—socializing the data, the process, and the environments together in order to come up with something tangible.
We’ve made strides in figuring out how to collect big data and now the goal is to process it, manage it, analyze it, and make something out of it. I think a lot of companies are trying to make something out of it, but I also think you’ll find that if you were to ask normal Americans how they would want to use the information, that’s where some of the best ideas from the world would come from. We want to give the everyday person what they’re asking for and what they need in these social environments.
WashingtonExec: Has the uncertainty in Congress affected your business?
Moe Jafari: With fourteen years of experience in the federal marketplace, if you haven’t learned to adjust and reapply, and adjust again you’re bound to be moving to a different market. So this is nothing new for us. There are some idiosyncrasies about this time period that make it different from previous experiences, but it’s essentially survival of the fittest, and we’ll make sure we come out stronger on the other side.
WashingtonExec: What is your opinion on the new LPTA environment?
Moe Jafari: We’re talking about lowest price technically accessible. So here we go with a new lexicon, a new data dictionary. In the beginning, like most companies, we scratched our heads. But we’ve been able to put together a plan of how to make ourselves not only the lowest price and technically accessible, but also able to produce what the government needs to meet its mission. We’re thinking out of the box on how—and what— we deliver. We have to look at delivery differently now than we did before because budgets are not unlimited, competition is very fierce, so how are you going to do that? It’s not an easy answer, but it’s one that we think we’ll be very successful in.
WashingtonExec: So switching gears a bit, are you involved with local STEM initiatives?
Moe Jafari: I sit on a charity board and we looked at how a STEM lab would work with some of our charitable causes. For example, if you have a platoon of soldiers coming back from war with a need for their training and skillsets, how do you identify and recruit them for your company? We are still in the infant stages but our ideas are starting to gel, we’re getting traction from some higher-ups in the federal marketplace, and we’ve talked about it with our clients, as well.
I am really excited about what the next year brings in terms of utilizing and setting up our own STEM lab, we called it our Security-Science-Solutions, Technology, Engineering, and People (S3TEP) Lab. And our S3TEP Lab is just that—science, technology, engineering, production, and people—and that’s where we really feel that we’re going to be able to excel. Our end goal is to have a lab facility where we can train and bring in bright young talent; after all, that’s what keeps this industry and country growing.
WashingtonExec: Is there someone who has served as a mentor to you in the industry?
Moe Jafari: Yeah, Evan Evans. He retired many moons ago. I don’t know if he thought of himself as mentor to me, but the aspects of watching, learning, asking questions. He allowed me to think, to do, and was a great guy.
WashingtonExec: What was your first job?
Moe Jafari: Besides being cheap labor for my father? I was a paperboy, and I hated it. It was amazing how many people would go and hide when it was time to pay! But it was a great learning lesson—by the third week I knew I had to go to the same house to make money, I would just bring a chair and sit out front until somebody came home to pay me.
WashingtonExec: Favorite DC sports team?
Moe Jafari: Go Caps!
