In GovCon, Amy Dalton’s focus is creating environments where employees thrive, service members on the frontlines are safe, and federal missions are completed successfully.
Amy is the chief performance officer at Two Six Technologies, where she focuses on team building, culture, innovation, people and impact. Beyond this role, she’s a former Army intelligence officer, a mother of two, and an outdoor enthusiast, drawing on her passions and experiences in her professional life.
An upstate New York native, Dalton grew up the oldest of three girls. Her parents were physical education teachers, instilling in her a love of the outdoors and athletics. “They made sure I was constantly doing things to be physically fit and healthy, both body and mind,” she tells WashingtonExec.
Her parents’ work ethic was also extremely influential. “Watching them through those years really instilled in me that drive and work ethic, as well as the concept of service and the idea of giving back to the community and those around you,” she says.
These values were important to her family growing up, and remain important to her today.
“Leadership was also a big thing for my father,” she says. “He was very focused on us using our strengths to the best of our ability.” Dalton’s father focused on her potential to lead a group or a team, a skill she honed throughout her life.
She leveraged her love for communications and English, and her mission-oriented team mentality when deciding her educational path. When Dalton was a senior in high school, her father encouraged her to apply for an Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship.
He never served in the military himself, but he knew many with ROTC experience and the leadership skills it fostered. After applying, Dalton received full scholarships to several colleges with Army ROTC programs. “The world was my oyster at that point, which was amazing,” she says.
Dalton chose Lehigh University for its robust academics and ROTC program, known for successfully placing Army officers into their preferred career fields. She admits she didn’t know much about ROTC before enrolling. “It was a huge learning curve,” she says. “But I learned so much at Lehigh’s ROTC and I got to experience so many new opportunities that I never would have without the program.”
The structured program allowed Dalton to excel at school. She compared the time commitment to having a full-time job at college ⏤ recalling early morning trainings, weekends in the woods learning navigation, juggling a full class schedule and more ⏤ but she made lifelong friends and memories. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” she says.
She even had the opportunity to attend Airborne School in Fort Benning, Georgia, where she learned how to jump out of airplanes solo during her sophomore year of college. “My college experience was a little bit different, but I was lucky because Lehigh really valued their ROTC program, so I was able to do ROTC and still have a normal college experience,” she says.
Dalton graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in public relations, hoping to take her interests and learnings in communications to the Army. That was her plan, at least. But life rarely goes as planned.
Driven by the Mission
Dalton served as a military intelligence officer at Fort Hood, Texas, one of the few female officers in her brigade. As the brigade’s assistant intelligence officer, she arrived at her post in early 2001. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she postponed her planned wedding and, less than two weeks later, was deployed with her brigade to prepare for the invasion at the Iraq-Kuwait border.
“At the time, I didn’t have a lot of experience with the Army, I envisioned myself at this cushy desk job doing public relations,” she says. “The job I got was about as far from that as you could imagine.” Rather, Dalton’s office was the inside of a tank or Humvee ⏤ but unlike traditional jobs, her team was her team 24/7.
“They were the folks I worked with, I played with, I learned with, I cried with,” she says. “That, for me, was foundational from a team-building perspective.” It’s also how she looks at building teams in the commercial space, which she eventually pivoted to.
Dalton’s husband, also a military intelligence officer at Fort Hood, deployed with her at times, but after five years of back-and-forth stations at Iraq and Fort Hood, she needed a change. So, Dalton joined the Reserves and the National Guard and became a civilian.
Her first job in industry was with United Healthcare in New York City, but although the role was important, Dalton didn’t feel the same connection that she felt with her work in the Army. “I honestly missed my military family,” she says. “I missed the team and the bonds that I formed with those people, and I missed the mission. I missed the impact.”
After a year, Dalton felt a strong pull back toward government work. She left United Healthcare for Strategic Forecasting, an intelligence publishing company where she acted as the Senior Briefer, but found it still wasn’t close enough to the mission. Soon after, she joined ITT as a program manager and contractor with the Defense Department’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), focusing on using technology to understand the improvised explosive device network.
“I loved the mission, I loved the feeling that I was helping people who were where I had been a few years ago,” she says. “I felt really connected and that I was making a difference.”
During this period, Dalton began to explore the use of open-source information. Although her intelligence career was classified, she was curious about combining the unclassified information typically used in her work at Strategic Forecasting, Inc and classified data. In 2009, she left ITT to support Sierra Nevada Corp. as a Senior Director, establishing a new group called the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment, which aimed to merge unclassified and classified information to improve insights.
After eight years, Dalton was approached by Ryan Paterson, the CEO of IST Research Corp., whom she had deployed with to Iraq and worked alongside at JIEDDO. Paterson needed someone to oversee the company’s daily operations and the recent investment that they had received.
He also aimed to build a company that could significantly impact information operations, a prospect that excited Dalton. As the Chief Operating Officer at IST Research, she concentrated on procurement and acquisition, collaborating with the government and the Small Business Innovative Research Program to accelerate the deployment of their product and capabilities. This experience would later be relevant at Two Six as well.
Dalton’s partnership with Ryan Paterson drove years of success at IST Research, including the development of Pulse into a unique, proprietary product for government customers operating in the information environment. Dalton led the company’s partnership with GSA to establish a sole source ordering contract for the product, which contributed greatly to the company’s success. Dalton’s effective leadership of IST Research culminated in the sale of the company to global investment firm The Carlyle Group, which enabled the formation of Two Six Technologies in February 2021.
As the vice president of operations for the new Two Six platform, Dalton was responsible for establishing and managing the original component organizations. She then scaled the company’s operations to support rapid growth while also smoothly integrating four acquired companies over the next three years.
Dalton’s successful management and strategic leadership has been recognized both internally and externally: she was promoted at Two Six to executive vice president and chief performance officer, and last month won a WashingtonExec 2024 Chief Officer Award.
Changing How Government Operates
Part of Dalton’s role is to ensure Two Six continues to grow and work on challenging programs that change the way the federal government operates in the information space. In 2023, Two Six grew over 25%, conducted over 35,000 operations, and plans to continue that trend.
“I want to build and drive a company that is known for its corporate culture and for the impressive capabilities that it offers to the government,” Dalton says. She’s working to grow the company’s relationships with its customers and partners, transitioning the research to solutions that align with customer needs.
Dalton is also heavily focused on culture, and sustaining a “small business feel” for Two Six’ employees. “It’s that human interaction, that high-touch relationship,” she says. “We are trying to build that into our company culture, even as we get larger.”
A healthy culture at Two Six is founded on trust and transparency between leadership and employees. “We spend a lot of time getting to know each other and building that trust,” Dalton says.
In her role, she also oversees high-risk or special programs that require her level of direction. “I do get to dive in and run programs when there’s a special case and it is honestly the thing that keeps me feeling connected to the mission,” she says.
And though she is a classically trained intelligence officer, Dalton is a people person first. She’s team-oriented and wants to ensure her team is having an impact on the people who need the information.
Two Six as a company is also focused on adaptive acquisition and finding non-traditional ways to work with government procuring capabilities. “The government is still behind the times in procurement and contract vehicle cycles. We are trying to work collaboratively with the Government to determine how can we, as a commercial company, w speed up that cycle,” Dalton says. “Ultimately, how do we get capability to the end user faster?”
Information advantage is another focus area for the company. “We need to improve our ability to operate inside the information environment,” Dalton says. “Other countries do not have the bureaucracy that we have, and so we are at a disadvantage and losing ground.”
At Two Six, we’re focused on trying to figure out how to push the government forward, improve the way the U.S. operates in the information environment, and better understand how other countries and organizations are operating in the environment as well in order to have an impact on national security.”
And like most GovCons, Two Six has its eyes on artificial intelligence. The company has used AI in its products for years and is working to finalize its strategy in AI and be a thought leader in the space.
A Champion for Women in GovCon
Dalton’s passion for service and the federal mission keeps her in GovCon. “I was that person in Iraq, a long time ago now, and I want to make sure that we are doing everything we can with all of the technology we have to make their jobs easier and to make those folks safer,” she says.
She feels strongly about making the world a better place, especially as a mother of two preteen girls. “I don’t know what the world is going to look like in a lot of years and so I think it’s really important that I am here working in the GovCon space because I can have an impact,” she says.
Mentoring the young female population and helping to expand that presence in GovCon and tech is also important to Dalton. Like her father, she wants to help young women recognize and use their full potential while sparking their interests at a younger age.
“I think we must work with young girls in elementary school who don’t even know that [GovCon] is an option for them,” she says. “We need to expand their horizon, show them the art of the possible. I think the best way to do that is to have women show them, and to be a part of their lives early on.”
Dalton participates in programs that inspire teenage girls to explore new opportunities. She leads two Girl Scout troops, introducing them to technology and roles typically not associated with women. Additionally, she coaches Girls on the Run, a program that helps young girls develop courage, self-confidence and stamina.
Beyond these activities, Dalton also coaches girls’ basketball and soccer teams and serves as a room parent in her daughter’s classroom. She is driven by a passion for “helping to build future women leaders,” she explains.
Dalton carries this enthusiasm into her role at WashingtonExec’s Women Leadership Council. She joined to connect with other professional women and extend her influence to emerging leaders at Two Six.
“We have a lot of young up-and-coming leaders that I’m excited about and that I want to offer additional opportunities to,” she says. “I feel like being a part of this council will help me provide opportunities for them as well.”
Cultivating Her Passions at Work and Beyond
In her free time, Dalton loves spending time outdoors with her family, enjoying activities like downhill skiing, water skiing, hiking, running and exploring new places with her kids. These lifelong passions, rooted in her upbringing, have shaped her values, which she aims to pass on to her children.
At Two Six, she’s also looking forward to the future. Dalton is excited to foster the company’s culture, hiring passionate people and building teams to succeed. “We have exceptional employees and I have an exceptional team of people that I get to work with every day,” she says. “I’m so lucky.”
Two Six continues to grow and make its mark in the industry, strengthening its impact on the U.S.’ capabilities in the information environment. Dalton remains dedicated to guiding the company toward achieving these goals.
Yet ultimately, her passion and drive come back to people. “I am the chief performance officer because I have an amazing team that works with me and I wouldn’t be here without them,” she says. “They are truly exceptional.” Dalton learned early in her career to surround herself with people smarter than herself, and she truly feels she has done that at Two Six.
“We are all bonded in our desire to really make an impact on the mission,” she says. “I’m really proud of what we’ve built here and excited to continue to help it grow.”