The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Pinnacle Awards were announced Oct. 13, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually Dec. 8.
Next is Cybersecurity Executive of the Year (Public Company) finalist Kevin Coggins, who leads Booz Allen Hamilton’s Positioning, Navigation, and Timing service offering. Here, he talks career inflection points, what he has learned from failures, focus areas going forward and more.
What has made you successful in your current role?
Surrounding myself with amazing people. There is no success that I own as an individual. The successes I’ve seen in my current role are those of my team, my business partners and my clients.
In particular, I am proud of an endeavor we’ve been working around cyber resilience for commercial aircraft. My team — which consists of executives at Booz Allen who believed in our vision, employees from across the firm with a passion for aviation and cybersecurity, and our partners across government and industry — created an agile framework and technology core to support rapid identification and mitigation of aircraft cyber vulnerabilities. What stands out most about this project and why it stands out for me is its positive contribution to aviation safety, which impacts everyone, including those reading this.
What was a turning point or inflection point in your career?
A major turning point in my career was when I served as the Army’s direct reporting program manager for Positioning, Navigation and Timing in the Department of Defense and worked with acquisition and technology professionals across government and industry to address critical PNT challenges facing our nation.
During this time, I learned how to navigate and manage complex intersections of requirements, funding and acquisition to address key challenges. This effort spanned weapons systems and capabilities across all domains, resulting in multiple programs of record and projects focused on Assured PNT across DOD. It also provided renewed focus in other federal agencies on ensuring resilient PNT for U.S. critical infrastructure.
I consider this an inflection point in my career because I developed a deep passion for ensuring our Warfighters have the absolute best capability we can provide — and that is what I have committed my career to achieving.
I am very proud to pursue this passion with my colleagues at Booz Allen – many of whom are veteran Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Guardians — where we collectively remain focused on solving our clients’ most challenging problems.
What’s one key thing you learned from a failure you had?
Failure has taught me the leadership skill of assuming noble intent. We work in a fast-paced world of competing interests, continuous challenges and complex technologies. Upon this backdrop of stressors, it is easy to find yourself in conflict with different individuals who may appear to have competing interests.
Early in my career, I experienced several conflicts with those who I viewed as actively working against the goals I was trying to achieve. A mentor and friend introduced me to the concept of actively assuming this noble intent in others, which helped me to develop the skill to seek out (vs. assume) individual interests and motivators and work together with that person (or organization) for mutually beneficial outcomes.
Assuming noble intent has helped me foster positive relationships throughout my career. It’s been one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my career.
Today, I regularly coach my direct reports on assuming noble intent when they find themselves in conflicts with others — which has consistently led them to positive relationships and positive outcomes.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?
My primary focus is to solve our clients’ most challenging problems at the intersection of cyber and physical — from space systems to aviation and all points in between. There are multitudes of technologies to bring to bear on these problem sets — today, it’s digital twins and low-Earth orbit space capabilities — tomorrow, it’s quantum and nanotechnology.
We live in a modern society that is highly dependent upon technology. Our clients’ missions heavily depend on technology to perform well, even when challenged with undesirable scenarios, such as an adversary threat or an unforeseen circumstance. Solving these problems is something I am very passionate about.
Ensuring the success of our client’s missions is very important to me — as it ensures the safety and prosperity of our nation.
What’s your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?
Be bold. Stay humble. Assume noble intent. Never stop learning, especially from others. Lead with gratitude.