Nelson McClung knows how hard it can be to deliver foreign aid effectively in uncertain economic times.
“Our clients have to adapt to an ever-changing international environment, which means they need to shift the focus of their programs and funding,” he said. As senior vice president and chief operating officer at XLA, McClung is helping them to manage and overcome those challenges.
The company focuses on institutional support contracts, delivering advisory and programmatic support to help agencies meet their mission requirements, whether in support of food aid, education or global health.
“We help them conduct procurements and provide other critical services needed to support vital programs and implement services on the ground,” he said.
Because of the dynamic nature of the working environment, “it’s difficult for agencies to do their planning and identify their resource needs,” he said. “We get creative with them, providing the support that they need on both a long and shorter-term basis, providing support where and when needed. We provide subject-matter experts across a range of technical fields.”
XLA’s deep expertise helps, in what can often be a challenging environment.
“The client comes with a very unique set of needs: We need a person in-country for the next six months to provide technical advisory services,” McClung said. “We have a deep network of resources that we’ve developed and cultivated over the years. That is vital in this space, finding those individuals with specialized expertise who are willing to travel to some austere places of the world and work right alongside our clients, day in and day out.”
“We reach back to folks that we’ve worked with in the past, even if they haven’t supported us for over five years, and we can still pick up the conversation like it never stopped, to get that person deployed as quickly as possible,” he continued.
It takes a strong back office to deliver that kind of service: This isn’t your usual 9-to-5 GovCon work.
“We have people in corporate office who are constantly on call and on alert,” he said. “Your program manager or someone in your HR staff or the travel manager may receive a phone call on a Saturday morning at 4 a.m. from someone overseas who’s having trouble with their travel arrangements. You have to troubleshoot on the fly to find a quick and effective solution to the problem. We’re on call and ready to do that.”
As COO, McClung relies on a highly capable team.
“The folks that support the international development community are truly dedicated to it,” he said. “It is their calling, and most of them have traveled overseas extensively and have experienced similar issues themselves. They’ve lived and breathed it throughout most of their careers.”
As he looks to grow the firm, McClung plans to expand the offerings beyond institutional support contracts, to help more directly in getting aid where it needs to go.
“We have the proven capability to quickly mobilize and respond to the client needs in the international development space,” he said. “A lot of the work that we’re currently doing is in the Middle East and Africa, and there are always challenges that come up. We’ll continue to grow our capabilities in those areas, and pivoting into project implementation will be the next step.”
Right now, “we’re assisting aid agencies with contract services and technical advisory support to develop and manage international development services on the ground. We’re helping our clients accomplish that mission,” he said. “In the near term, we’re looking to pivot more into implementation support. That’s one area that we hope to grow.”
McClung describes service delivery as a next natural step for XLA.
“We have been working alongside them for decades, so it’s a natural progression for us to be the group that is partnering with these organizations to deliver the services on the ground,” he said. “We’ve been on the other side, with the contractual and management support work, so we know most of the challenges that implementers face, and so we can partner with them to work through those issues.”
At the same time, McClung is helping steer XLA through the challenges that inflation poses in the GovCon space, where the price set on long-running contracts is sometimes out of alignment with the expense of doing business.
“There’s always a fiscal responsibility for any company to really closely monitor these contracts, but never more so than there is right now,” he said. “We work with clients to tailor the job descriptions and requirements. We work on a case-by-case basis to ensure we’re not overstaffing or understaffing, to hone in on those particular requirements.”
On a personal level, McClung said he’s proud to support the foreign aid mission.
“What happens in many of these countries impacts us here at home. We have a global community and global markets, and we will feel those effects,” he said. As a nation, “we’re in a position to help, and we have demonstrated that ability on numerous occasions.”