Top 10 CFOs to Watch in 2020

Pamela Rothka

Chief Financial Officer, Octo Consulting Group

Pamela Rothka joined Octo in 2019 and manages finance, accounting, contracts, pricing, HR and facilities. Under her leadership, Octo experienced 65% year-over-year revenue growth in 2019, and the acquisition and integration of a 125-employee business.

And in the last year, Octo saw a spike in efficiencies in almost every area of the infrastructure while creating a scalable organization. This included a redesign of the headquarters facility to modernize operations while enabling company growth as well as a redesign of Octo’s indirect rate structure that increased cost competitiveness.

Rothka also oversaw the strategic reorganization of HR by adding HR business partners and creating a top-talent program to identify and develop talent across the organization, as well as the implementation of a new financial system that streamlines operations, speeds time-to-close and improves scalability of processes that goes live mid-2020.

“We focus not only on customer success, but on the value to the end user as well,” Rothka said. “We believe that by keeping in mind the warfighter in the field calling in air strikes, we build better targeting software for the Air Force that executes strike authorization approvals much faster.”

Octo also places a strong emphasis on employee satisfaction and growth, providing challenging and dynamic opportunities for employees, and rewarding them with benefit packages and competitive salaries.

“Social engagement has always been at the core of our culture, thus we are able to attract and retain people focused on giving back to their professions and communities,” Rothka added. It’s the combination of focusing on the end user, on employee satisfaction and on technical acumen that makes Octo’s teams perform better.

And through oLabs, Octo’s internal R&D organization, the company devises innovative solutions to its customers’ problems at no direct cost to those customers — and is investing in emerging technologies to do so.

For example, Octo recently supported a proof of concept initiative with the Department of Health and Human Services that used blockchain to support mandatory, annual Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation filings to the Department of Homeland Security. CDM requires the filing of every agency’s network audit logs for review as a means to make sure malicious activity on federal networks is discovered and mitigated.

“Everyone thinks of blockchain in terms of bitcoin and cryptocurrency,” Rothka explained. “However, by leveraging blockchain’s innate provenance as a cybersecurity tool, we provided an innovative solution to HHS that saved its CDM auditors months of time auditing the more than 10,000 audit logs that were filed.”

And it’s innovative solutions like this one that can make a difference in an agency’s operations — and why Octo is investing millions of dollars in oLabs.

Why Watch:

In 2020, Octo will continue to focus on M&A as it looks to augment its current capabilities with other innovative firms where the cultures and priorities align. Operationally, Rothka and the executive leadership team will continue to drive internal efficiencies and prepare the organization for scale while maturing business processes, customer support and reducing operational costs.

“As it has been for the last 13 years, we will remain 100% focused on our customers’ success,” she said. “Our passion for helping modernize our government to drive efficiencies and excellence into their operations will always be our primary focus.”