As vice president of growth at PingWind, Inc., Lucy Martin brings 20 years of experience working for small, medium and large businesses in the health and civilian agency markets. She’s equipped with the skills to lead government contracting sales teams by developing the right capture strategies to win contracts.
She began her career as a research analyst at INPUT, which was acquired and is now known as the Deltek GovWin IQ product.
“This afforded me an opportunity to gain a strong foundational understanding of federal contracting and government budget and procurement lifecycle,” Martin told WashingtonExec.
After that, she moved through various business development and capture roles where she refined her skills in executing capture strategies to secure professional services and information technology contracts.
“I joined PingWind almost 6 years ago because I wanted to work with an emerging small business where I could gain experience across a broader scope of business and growth strategy,” she added.
Below, Martin shares more about her current role and priorities, where her team sees growth opportunities in the future, why mentorship matters in GovCon and more.
What are your current top priorities and responsibilities? How do these relate to your company’s overall mission/growth strategy?
My top priorities currently include elevating PingWind as a thought leader for our customers, providing proactive solutions, and expanding our growth team to continuously keep up with our success and ambitious goals. PingWind is also preparing for our transition to competing as a mid-sized large business under Full and Open Competition. This change comes with its own challenges, requiring strong corporate infrastructure, deep expertise in our field of competition, and a unified understanding of who we are as a company.
Where do you and your team see growth opportunities in your current field or portfolio you support?
We see a huge amount of potential to bring advanced data analytics, quantum, and AI expertise to federal agencies. We see these as key areas of opportunity to bring advanced value to our DoD and Health customers.
How are you and your team planning to address/prepare for these opportunities?
I personally lead the growth team to propose and implement initiatives aimed at overcoming growth challenges and opportunities, while remaining proactive in identifying the next phase of challenges. Some initiatives we have successfully implemented as we prepare for the next phase of PingWind’s success include: merger and acquisition strategy, participation in mentor-protégé programs, investments in Intellectual Property (IP), deep collaboration with a diverse industry partner network, as well as a focus on a corporate culture focused on continuous learning.
How important is mentorship and networking in GovCon? Were they influential to your career?
Mentorship and networking are critical for professional and corporate growth. I personally maintain continuous contact with the same few mentors who have been critical in my success and development over the past ten years. I have brought this into PingWind, where we recently scaled PingWind’s employee outreach and engagement to match the growth of the company. We recently established an employee portal, an employee recognition program, and launched an initiative to overhaul its performance review process to ensure a continued focus on the success and wellbeing of staff.
Our people-first philosophy also translates into the care and customer-service mindset that we bring to our client and partner engagements. By encouraging the team to focus on timely, transparent, and thoughtful interactions, PingWind has built a reputation for being a reliable and responsive small business that the industry can trust to deliver.
What is something most people don’t know about you personally?
When I’m not working and parenting my two young children, I enjoy reading murder mystery books.