Tom Watson
CEO, Serco Inc.
Tom Watson was named CEO of Serco in North America in September 2022 after leading the company’s defense business for several years. As 2023 began, he identified maintaining Serco’s organic growth, improving technical capabilities and preserving the company’s people-first culture as top priorities.
Serco in North America experienced a robust year in 2023, starting with a successful win in the recompete for one of its largest and key contracts, supporting the Affordable Care Act for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Following this achievement, the company continued its positive momentum by securing new business across its portfolio, leading to nearly 8% organic growth for the year while maintaining strong profit margins, Watson said.
“We also made outstanding progress in continuing our journey of expanding our technical capabilities and advanced technologies, driving innovation into our programs, creating efficiency, and generating positive impact for our customers,” he added.
Watson is known as a hands-on CEO who spends a lot of time meeting with front-line teams and customers across the company’s large and highly diverse portfolio, while getting directly involved in strategy and large bids.
“The outstanding employees of Serco are entrusted by our customers with supporting some of the most important programs for our national defense and civilian agencies in the U.S. and Canada,” he said. “I am excited to have the privilege to support these important missions and am truly honored to serve our highly engaged, caring and mission-focused teams.”
Why Watch
Serco is entering 2024 with a lot of momentum and the biggest number of submitted bids in its history. The company made great strides in advanced technologies like autonomous ships, AI, data science and digital engineering. It’s known for providing a wide range of services to the Navy. Under Watson’s leadership, Serco plans to offer similar services to other military branches and to expand its important federal civilian, state and Canadian operations.
Watson said Serco stands out because of its diverse range of skilled professionals, including data science Ph.D.s, engineers, technicians, welders, air traffic controllers, customer service representatives and safety patrol drivers, all contributing to delivering comprehensive solutions for its customers.
“For our company, culture is everything, and I view nurturing that culture as my single most important job as CEO,” he added. “The only path to success at Serco is through teamwork, customer focus and living our values of trust, care, innovation and pride. If we can maintain that sense of shared purpose and values as we gain scale and layer in capabilities, there is no stopping us.”