The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Chief Officer Awards were announced March 28, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place live, in-person May 10.
Next is Adam Estrada, chief technology officer at Royce Geo, finalist in the Private and Public Chief Technology Officer category. Here, he shares key achievements, focus areas going forward, career advice and more.
What key achievements did you have in 2023?
In 2023, we grew and supported multiple programs that use our CURVE Operational Environment and SPEAR sensors. This is due in part to our team of exceptional engineers, data scientists and analysts who all have a CAN’T QUIT/WON’T QUIT attitude and strive to build a capability stack pertinent to various mission threads. This is evident in our team’s ability to rapidly respond to changes in requirements and address critical customer needs. The CURVE OE was built from the ground up to address key customer issues, and it is represented in our successes last year. By “eating our own dog food,” we were able to provide a cohesive solution that our team is proud to use and call their own, which is a key driver of success for Royce Geo.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the mission?
Our primary focus area is to enhance the CURVE OE to support the automation of additional complex tasks that support the most challenging customer problems. These tasks include maritime domain awareness (MDA), activity-based intelligence, pattern of life analysis, accelerated tasking and orchestration of commercial satellites and many others. These automated workflows are intended to reduce the cogitative burden and increase efficacy on the end user which in turn accelerates their ability to provide insight into key critical questions by acting as a force multiplier.
What is your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?
You must do what interests you the most and challenge yourself to become great at it. I subscribe to Pink’s motivational model that focuses on people becoming intrinsically motivated. There are three factors to this model: autonomy, mastery and purpose. To be autonomous means that you have control over what you do and who you do it with.
At Royce Geo, we promote the use of cross-functional teams ⏤ all of which have a lead expert to help guide and mentor other members of their team. This helps to gain autonomy, build trust, and improve innovation across multiple disciplines. Mastery is the desire to improve oneself through learning and practice and do it because you are highly motivated to do so. Purpose is the notion that you are working for something larger than yourself. Find a project at work or even outside of your day job to apply your skills towards.
This will help build your autonomy by applying your newly mastered skills which will lead to a tremendous amount of self-satisfaction! I have spent my career using this framework as a tool to gain a better understanding of the things I love to do and then master them.
Fun Fact: What is something about you that most people do not know about?
I have been an avid fan of the guitar for as long as I remember, and it’s something that I share with my dad and father-in-law. We constantly seek to improve our knowledge of the instrument, famous musicians (past and present) and everything in between. I find a great deal of satisfaction in researching the exact relationship that must exist between fingers and strings but have yet to find and master it . . . CAN’T QUIT/WON’T QUIT!