Top 10 CFOs to Watch in 2020

Chuck Hicks

Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer, NCI Information Systems, Inc.

Chuck Hicks joined NCI Information Systems, Inc. in May 2019. During his eight months with NCI, he has redefined and engaged the teams he leads — finance, contracts, security and facilities — to be more operationally focused. This includes getting these teams to rethink how they can help NCI grow financially. In a short time, his efforts are taking off.

“One of the greatest impacts I’m noticing is we are much more responsive and engrained with the business,” Hicks said. “We’ve made significant gains in our ability to respond to internal and external financial reporting requests. These improvements are a result of bringing in new leadership to the finance organization and integrating initiatives to improve operational excellence, efficiency, efficacy and performance.

Hicks has a proven track record of putting “people first” and believes in the importance of having direct engagement across the organizations he leads as well as throughout the enterprise. This is extremely important for mentoring, instilling a collaborative work culture, providing career advancement opportunities and increasing employee engagement, he says.

Why Watch:

As NCI CFO, Hicks plays a vital role in supporting the company’s growth strategy and is significantly involved in business development efforts, particularly in the bidding and pricing strategy as well as through relationships with industry. Over the past couple of years, NCI has invested significant resources into building a range of artificial intelligence capabilities through exclusive partnerships with commercial leaders to leverage cutting-edge emerging technologies, including robotic process automation, machine learning and code refactoring. With its AI framework, Shai, NCI has operationalized AI for its federal customers — and itself — to transform its work and empower its workforce.

In the coming year, Hicks looks forward to having more engagement with NCI’s customers and is excited to broaden conversations with members of the intelligence community.

“I am a firm believer that AI will do wonderful things for government overall but its impact on the intelligence community will truly be disruptive and a game-changer,” Hicks said. “I’m equally energized about NCI’s initiative to expand our portfolio with digital transformation capabilities to help drive federal agencies’ digital transformation and IT modernization efforts forward and advance the mission of government.”