Rich Crowe looks back on one of his initial assignments after joining Booz Allen as “one of the greatest stories most people will never actually see.”
In the early 2000s, during the height of the global war on terror, Crowe joined Booz Allen and almost immediately launched into high-stakes work. His first assignment: supporting a counter-IED Army contract out of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
“You would have an adversary coming up with new and innovative ways to detonate a roadside bomb, and then you would have collaborative engineers from government and industry working across the globe, figuring out how to reverse engineer and then counter a novel approach to safeguard our troops,” he said.
This type of work is important but rarely discussed. Crowe remembers a senior client beginning a meeting by reading an email from a troop commander about how a piece of equipment Booz Allen developed in conjunction with its partners had just saved the patrol’s lives. That moment — and others that would follow — defined how Crowe viewed his job.
Today, more than two decades into his career at Booz Allen, Crowe is the president of the company’s Civil Sector business. In his role, he helps agencies adapt to new regulations, develop advanced technology solutions to meet ambitious goals with limited resources, and maintain technical and operational excellence. He’s helping agencies build and navigate artificial intelligence, innovate with their data. and upgrade the workforce for the next loop of ever-changing technology.
From Large Tech Companies to Startup Guru and Back Again
Before Booz Allen, Crowe worked at General Electric and United Technologies for the first decade of his career. Then he founded his own startup.
“We started with an idea at the kitchen table and turned it into a reality with a medical device — a novel way of doing medical sterilization,” Crowe said.
From there, he sold the intellectual property to a medical company. With the birth of his first daughter, Crowe didn’t anticipate returning to work at a large tech company, but he knew startup life was intense and thought he should leave it behind, at least for a while. He was working seven days a week for 14 to 15 hours each day. Then a colleague connected him with Booz Allen.
“It seemed like a good opportunity to get back into doing meaningful mission work without the pressure of being in a startup environment,” he said.
But he soon realized this was no small task either. Crowe came on board in the midst of a global war on terror supporting an Army contract and found himself once again putting in long hours. Only this time, it was different.
“The days were just as long and just as intense, but it was a different mission threat,” he said. “And honestly, I found working at Booz Allen the best decision I ever made. When you are given an opportunity to work on missions of national consequence and you recognize that for the gift that it is, you throw yourself all into it.”
Eventually, the mission moved to Aberdeen, Maryland, and the Department of Veterans Affairs opened its technology acquisition center in New Jersey. Crowe’s role shifted to supporting a partnership with colleagues in the health space as they focused on bringing disruption and modernization to the VA.
“I was able to reach back to my experiences at GE and United Technologies and my startup,” he said.
He found many of the same principles applied. Federal healthcare, he said, is a passion project. It was this passion that resulted in Crowe being asked to lead the overall health portfolio for Booz Allen. This responsibility led to further engagement with the Defense Health Agency mission and supporting the warfighters and their families, as well as intensive work with the Department of Health and Human Services.
Crowe’s rewarding tenure leading the health portfolio and success in achieving client mission needs most recently culminated in his elevation to president of the entire civil sector at Booz Allen.
The importance of speed was a key lesson Crowe has learned, and the old adage, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” applies here, he said.
“I think you need to be as close to perfect as you can be, but it needs to be timely,” he said. “And I think when you look at these missions, bringing real world solutions to problems quickly to demonstrate the art of possible and then you land and expand to show how the solution can grow from there and take root. That approach has been one of the differentiators for Booz Allen and has contributed to the success we’ve had with federal agencies.”
Booz Allen, he said, is truly an advanced technology company focusing on solutions and outcomes, whether it’s through partnerships with NVIDIA, AWS or Palantir, developing world-class solutions with a variety of partners has been a defining point in Booz Allen’s success. It allows the company to keep a laser-focused eye on emerging technology while also ensuring the quality of delivery and impact to citizens and taxpayers is of the highest caliber.
Joining Booz Allen during the height of the war on terror impacts Crowe today as he leads the civilian sector, bringing the same sense of urgency and mission importance that initially anchored his career there. The tech company continues to focus on missions of national importance and on bringing novel technology in innovative ways to solve pressing problems, he said.
Top Federal Civilian Sector Priorities
Data enables mission success across agencies. Whether it’s the VA delivering benefits to veterans or the Justice Department securing streets and neighborhoods, data drives better outcomes, he said.
But federal civilian agencies are riding the waves of technological change just like everyone else. Over the decades, Crowe noted, organizations have moved from storing data on mainframe computers to desktops to data centers and the cloud. Now, they’re beginning to reap the benefits of models that selectively share relevant and appropriate data across agencies, enabled by cloud solutions.
But the question remains: In a world that demands more, how is that done?
“We have to make sure that the tools that we are building for agencies are modern and emulate the consumer experience that you have,” Crowe said. “You’re able to shop on the apps, you’re able to engage through social media and email on the fly. You can do your banking on the fly. And so the standard in many ways that government agencies are being held accountable to are the commercial experiences that citizens have every day in their lives.”
Crowe said he draws from his startup experiences and the necessity of being agile as an organization.
“The real disruption that everyone’s dealing with is the pace of change driven by technology,” he said. “No one is afforded in their personal and professional life the moment to just sit back and relax.”
Now, Crowe said, there’s a realization in government of the need to adapt faster, adjust on the fly and be ready to continue changing as technology shifts impact the mission.
The new administration has solicited all citizens to identify ways to improve government and take on fraud, waste and abuse, Crowe said, and Booz Allen is a proud partner and industry supporter to the government in these efforts.
“We’re also citizens and taxpayers, so we have skin in the game like everyone else,” he said. “We share ideas with our partners in government and the administration for example, to create novel ways to bring technology and AI to reduce wait times for disability claims.”
Looking Ahead
“Booz Allen is the leading provider of AI and cybersecurity to the United States government,” he said. “Those to me are table stakes if you want to be relevant in the economy of tomorrow. So we continue to invest not only in our core capabilities, in our technical ecosystem with our partners, but also in our workforce to make sure that our workforce has the skill sets to deploy the new cutting-edge technology that is constantly emerging.”
As Booz Allen prepares for technology to continue what seems to be a cycle of disruption every 18 months or so (and getting faster), Crowe and his teams are focused on enabling their clients’ missions and helping them achieve their goals faster, more cost-efficiently and by using technology smarter.
“We view ourselves as the OG disruptor, and I intend on being the disruptor in the future as well,” he said.