Heather Dallara joined PAE in June after spending the last decade primarily supporting Defense Department customers. PAE’s beliefs include a commitment to excellence and integrity and maximizing the potential of its teams to ensure the best possible service to its clients.
“Empowerment, integrity and bringing out the best in others is part of the responsibility we take on as leaders, as well as for our customers,” Dallara said. “The alignment between PAE’s vision and my personal philosophies were a natural fit.”
Prior to her current role at PAE, Dallara led a contracting team supporting a $3 billion portfolio for DOD, national security community and international customers. The opportunities she has had before arriving at PAE’s National Security Solutions allow Dallara to quickly build upon the great team already in place to ensure the contracting team at PAE is a trusted business partner and aligned around successful outcomes for customers and PAE.
PAE also recently announced the acquisition of CENTRA Technology, a move that strengthens PAE’s intelligence, defense and national and homeland security businesses. And throughout 2020, PAE’s contracting teams maintained focus and overachieved to ensure customers missions were not only met, but met with exceedingly overwhelming odds.
The scale and speed of IT modernization also allowed for remote working capacity and capabilities, and Dallara said virtual engagement is unlike anything she has ever seen before.
“We have leveraged the capability to the maximum extent possible,” she said.
Part of her team’s responsibilities include relationship building with government customers and with industry peers, and it is more intentional in a virtual environment. Dallara said her team meets with customers face-to-face whenever possible, and have leveraged virtual platforms available to customers to take full advantage of opportunities for collaboration.
Why Watch
Over the next 12 to 18 months, the priority focus areas for Dallara’s team include building a culture of intellectual curiosity, trust and transparency and a trusted adviser mindset.
“Building leaders who are curious and want to learn about their customers biggest problems and how we can solve them; those are the ones thinking of the ideas we have not thought of yet,” Dallara said.
She’s also focused on connecting contracting professionals to customers missions and showing them how her team works side by side to solve problems with customers. It’s is one of the best tools for building engaged leaders, Dallara said, though it may be just a bit harder at the moment.
See the entire Top 10 Contracting Execs to Watch in 2020 list here.