As the vice president of North America public sector services at Red Hat, Brent Cunningham leads the sales and delivery of consulting, training and technical account management services. While he’s passionate about serving the public sector mission, he remains drawn to the company’s culture, people and career progression opportunities.
Cunningham has been with Red Hat for 17 years. After graduating from the University of Maryland, he worked as a technical consultant for a large and small integrator until he joined Red Hat in 2008 through the acquisition of Amentra Inc.
Since then, he has held several roles, from technical implementation to program management, services sales and management.
“I’ve always had a deep passion for technology and solving problems, and while I took some formal classes in Computer Science and Engineering, my educational focus was in business,” he said. “I consider myself an extremely hard worker and some would say I was self taught on the technical implementation side but it’s my love for technology mixed with the ability to understand business execution that has helped me drive my career.”
Cunningham joined a small group in Red Hat’s Public Sector Services group 15 years ago, helping build, grow and expand that business across all sectors, capabilities and technology evolutions. Today, he leads the Public Sector Services team, which grew from a handful of people in an office to over 350.
Below, Cunningham shares more about his career path, current growth opportunities and priorities, the importance of mentorship, and more.
Why was this the path you chose, and how influential was it to your career?
I’m a little unique in the industry based on how long I’ve been at the same company. The Red Hat environment has a lot to do with why a majority of my career has been spent there. Red Hat’s culture, people, and career progression perspective have given me everything I could imagine and more. Red Hat is a company that is focused on moving its customers’ mission forward so it fosters an environment where people continuously have the opportunity to solve complex problems, work with emerging technologies, and utilize collaboration to achieve objectives regardless of roles or titles. People are empowered in a working environment where we focus on developing the solution for the Customer to move them and us forward.
This has given me an abundance of situational experience and skill development while solving business, technology, and managerial problems over the many years. I have a constant desire to strive for the next thing, working to the next success, and out work others. This drive is something I got from my parents, specifically my father, who I watched start his own business while raising four kids. Red Hat is the perfect company and environment for hard working individuals who strive to solve problems and progress forward.
Do you have a personal connection to the current mission you support? If so, please explain.
Our mission is our customers’ mission. My customer base over the last 15 years has been all Public Sector and as a U.S. citizen, that support directly impacts mine and my family’s life. I personally feel that we all benefit if we can deliver technology solutions that support the American people bigger, better, and faster.
Where do you and your team see growth opportunities in your current field or portfolio you support, or what do you anticipate to be your customers’ top pain points?
AI has been the hot topic and I don’t see that slowing down anytime soon as its implementation will streamline and accelerate things like data access, business functions, business processes, and speed to decision making just to name a few. AI is a huge marketplace opportunity for my team but beyond AI we see a lot of growth opportunities driving value-driven solutions that deliver innovation, efficiencies, and optimization in both cost and business capabilities. Modernization, cost optimization, business process efficiency, and innovation are focal points of the Government and align with what we’ve already been driving within Government agencies.
Whether this be through automation, artificial intelligence, application modernization, security, or hybrid cloud implementations, we’ve been providing the government these capabilities where it makes sense in driving their objectives forward. Our focus is to accelerate the Government’s objectives by providing the technical expertise to implement these types of solutions but also mentor and enable Government employees and partners to operate, maintain, and enhance these solutions for the long term.
How are you and your team planning to address/prepare for these opportunities?
My team and I have put a continued focus on enablement for technology, capability, and use case applicability. This continued focus allows us to learn, perfect, and evolve as technology evolves. At Red Hat we utilize on-demand training, classroom training, and solution focused bootcamps driven by real world use cases to enable our associates as the best of the best in open source technology. We then couple this level of enablement with the work that needs to be done directly with Customers. It starts with Customer intimacy and a deep understanding of the Customer’s goals, objectives, and pain points along with Government policy direction.
By understanding the Customer as if you are their direct employees allows us to marry the appropriate design, solution, and technology usage to meet the need. Each solution capability we design or build directly maps back to a customer objective which ties to their mission. This is how we ensure we are prioritizing the appropriate functionality to meet the underlying business needs of each Government agency, or as we say, value-driven solutions for our customers.
How important is mentorship & networking in GovCon? Were they influential to your career?
Mentorship, networking, and relationship building are critical in GovCon. I think the benefits of building a network from an individual career perspective are widely known but beyond that it’s critical for the opportunity to engage the appropriate customers and partners. For a full end to end solution, from hardware all the way to the end user, many companies, skills, and potentially programs need to be involved. Developing and growing your networks across ISVs, integrators, and the Government is key to being able to design and develop the best solutions for the Government’s needs. At scale when you maintain, operate and enhance technology solutions, you need to ensure you have the appropriate skills across partners and Government employees.
This is why mentorship is a key component of how my team and I deliver to the Government. We aren’t just there to help architect and implement systems but we want to be sitting side by side with other contractors and Govies to teach them the skills needed to continue to use, operate and enhance these systems so they evolve with the business needs.