People are often surprised when they learn Heath Starr makes his home not in the DMV but right in the heart of America: Kansas City.
As SAIC’s senior vice president, health market leader and chief innovation officer for the Civilian Business Group, Starr said he moved his family to the Sunflower State 17 years ago to better understand the people and places where his work was making an impact.
“Going to where the mission is delivered was an important part of my career,” he said. “Serving USDA from a place where we raise cattle and grow crops was important to understand the mission. I also think it’s given me a different perspective: You can have a successful career in any location or any geography if you’re committed to it.”
About Leadership
Ask Starr how to define leadership and he’s likely to say something like this: A person isn’t truly a good leader until they’re producing more good leaders.
In other words, leadership is about far more than the ability to lead a team in executing a task. It’s about showing others what’s needed to get the next job done — and avoiding micromanaging.
“The concept of macromanagement is that you hire smart people, train them in the fundamentals they need to know, and you give them a mission and an objective,” he said. “You don’t tell them how to take the hill. You say, ‘take the hill,’ and because they’ve had proper training, they know how to take the hill.”
Starr’s background as a business process analyst, program manager and director overseeing multiple programs gives him insight into execution at every level. Now as an SVP, he focuses on larger strategic goals and trusts program managers to deliver, he said.
“We decide the types of markets we want to be in and the types of capabilities we need to have as a company,” he said. “Then we forge relationships with other companies to create integrated solutions and highly repeatable vertical stacks of technology that will allow our program managers to serve their clients and accomplish the mission.”
He Wasn’t in Kansas Anymore
Starr grew up in a Kansas town of 12,000 people having no concept of the government contracting industry. At first, he considered becoming an attorney and going into politics at some point. That interest led him to study political science in college, graduating early and deciding to pursue a master’s in public administration.
The Department of Homeland Security was being established at the time, and Starr landed an internship with the agency’s undersecretary of management to complete his public administration degree.
“So imagine a kid who grows up in a town of 12,000 people, goes to college in a town of 40,000 people, and then shows up in D.C. with two duffel bags and a lot of ambition,” he said.
After his internship, he was hired by DHS and driven by the chance to make a difference for citizens. But after marrying, he left federal service, returning to the same desk in an industry role. He spent eight years with another company before joining SAIC 11 years ago.
“The thing I like about being on the industry side of this work is that I get to impact multiple missions at the same time,” he said. “When I was at DHS, it was great, and I absolutely loved it and the work that we did was meaningful and impactful. But since then, I’ve worked across 20 different federal agencies and contributed to all of those missions. There hasn’t been a single day in 20 years when I’ve woken up and not wanted to go to work.”
Impact and Innovation
Two years ago, Starr was chosen to lead SAIC’s venture capital team, which has since grown to eight portfolio companies — each starting as a 10- to 20-person startup with an idea to solve a tough problem.
“SAIC sits at an interesting intersection of understanding our clients’ mission needs and having the ability to scan the horizon of technology to find small startup companies that are doing really incredible things that, without help, would never make it into the federal ecosystem and be able to solve government problems,” he said.
Innovation happens at all levels, but being able to find research and development capability from Silicon Valley, Austin or Seattle and infuse it into the government process is the most important thing SAIC could do, he said.
One example is eligibilityNOW, a combination of startup and established technology partner products, like Xerox Intelligent Document Processing, combined with SAIC know-how and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to provide a commercial solution for AI-assisted adjudication of claims for government benefits.
The use cases are countless and often unnoticed, but SAIC’s eligibility solution enables agencies to adjudicate claims faster, with fewer errors. It delivers technology that addresses the effort required to process 97 million claims a year across the six leading government agencies.
“Developing and bringing to market solutions like eligibilityNOW allows me to honor the calling that led me to this career in the first place – to make the world a better place for my fellow citizens,” Starr said.
And, for Starr, innovation in government contracting is especially relevant today.
Leaders in government contracting must constantly push boundaries — finding better ways to do business, deliver services and introduce new technologies into the federal ecosystem — or risk falling short of what clients deserve, he said.
“For me, it’s impact,” Starr added. “I want to make a difference for my fellow citizens — whether they know it’s us or not. We get to do so much — and it’s not for the glory. It’s for the impact.”
‘Anxiety is a Tool’
Starr sees his leadership role as one focused on building tools, capabilities and training processes that will drive impact and then trusting his teams to execute. He believes in hiring for cultural fit and training for more specific duties. And the role of a leader, he said, extends beyond managing the task and into supporting the whole person.
Starr acknowledged the work is difficult, with inevitable ups and downs, especially during the proposal cycle. He tells his teams that anxiety can be a tool — a signal that something is wrong — and, when managed well, a source of focus and safety.
“And as a manager it’s not my job to make sure that nothing can possibly break,” he said. “Things are going to break. My job is to have people who feel emotionally supported and safe in the way that they deliver their job and to support them as they go through those processes and realize those emotions.”
Starr credits mentors who challenged him and checked in on his progress with shaping his leadership style. He now emphasizes grit as a core team strength, keeping a sign in his office that defines it as “the drive, stamina and fortitude to push through any challenge or obstacle until success is achieved.”
Starr said obstacles are part of the job, but the task is to get over, under, around or through them — never to turn back.
“Of all of the things that you need to be and of all of the skills that you need to have, grit is the most important,” he said.