The finalists for WashingtonExec’s 2024 Pinnacle Awards were announced Sept. 20, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place live, in-person Nov. 21.
Next is Alberto Reynoso, senior portfolio director of space and field operations at Two Six Technologies, and finalist in the Space Executive of the Year, Private Company, category. Here, he talks about recent achievements, shares career advice and more.
What key achievements did you have in 2024?
In 2024, Two Six Technologies opened a permanent office in Colorado Springs as a permanent home for Al’s team, all due to Al’s successful work with US Space Force and US Space Command customers. In 2021, Al and his family moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado and lead the development of a team focused on Space customers. At that time, TST had no presence in Colorado. By 2023, due to Al’s contributions, the team grew to 10 professionals, which included training sessions hosted by Two Six twice every month open to the entire space community.
Another achievement was that we expanded funding 8X with a US Government Space Community customer. In 2022, Al and his team won around $300k in new business in space. In 2023, the new contract awards reached $1.4 million. For 2024, these figures exceeded $5.0 million.
In 2024, Al’s team started impacting ongoing real-world operations by operationalizing our product in classified environments. In December 2023, under Al’s leadership, the Space SIPR IKE platform received ATO accreditation for Space Force, Two Six’s warfighting software platform. His team was able to obtain accreditation for IKE in under 120 days, an incredible (and likely unprecedented!) accomplishment.
As soon as the accreditation was approved, IKE became an active platform that space domain organizations started to leverage for operational purposes. Earlier in 2024, orders were issued across Space Force that IKE would be used for operational vulnerability management, leading to a flood of Space Force and SPACECOM personnel interested in learning more about IKE’s capabilities and use cases. In 2024, in the space community alone, IKE has ingested over 8,000 data objects from various sources, is used by about 300 users represented by close to 400 different Space organizations and teams, and over 2,000 tasks and orders have been issued and are being tracked in the IKE system operationally.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the mission?
Going forward, we hope to continue to grow the Two Six Tech Space team and our footprint within the Space Community both US Government and Industry partners. We also want to continue to improve upon our delivery model of rapidly delivering quality and needed capabilities to our customers in support of C2, command and control. We live in an automated world where we don’t have the luxury of waiting months or weeks, let alone days, from the time it takes to collect data to be presented to leadership for their decisions to be made.
I want our team to continue to be the conduit between the US Government Research Community and the Operational Community we support. As a company, Two Six Technologies has a strong working relationship within the US Government Research Community as we are part of several projects where new technology is being invented to the benefit of our operational community. I see it as a win-win situation when the Research and Operational community collaborate with each other.
What is your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?
The best career advice I can provide from my journey is learning from every engagement and having great mentors. Everyone’s journey will be uniquely driven by different paths taken to achieve one’s goals. Along the journey you will be part of different teams, work with new peers and new supervisors – learn from these engagements. In essence, incorporate the good and avoid the bad. Throughout the journey, identify successful mentors you can always go back for advice. I have been fortunate to still have mentors going back over 20 years I still reach out to and get advice from.
Fun Fact: What is something about you that most people do not know about?
Having served and retired from the US Army, I have lived in six different countries and moved 11 times across the continental US.
I own four horses, but rarely ride. Both my wife and daughter compete in a couple of disciplines from dressage, to jumping to endurance riding.