After retiring from the U.S. Air Force following a 34-year career there, William Bender joined Leidos in September 2017. Now tasked with overseeing and managing the Strategic Account Executives, a group of customer-facing senior-level former government officials, Bender aims to bolster customer relationships and advance strategic initiatives to foster organic growth.
In his first year at Leidos, Bender worked across the company’s four business groups to develop and implement a team-of-teams approach that led to increased collaboration between the business development and operations leads, technology developers, scientists, engineers, and in-house IT operations.
With a history dating back 50 years, Leidos has leveraged its deep experience across the entire federal government. Science and engineering remains at the heart of the solutions the company brings to agencies’ IT modernization and business transformation efforts.
Case in point: the Leidos Innovation Center serves as a robust partner to the most prolific R&D organizations within government and as a tech and innovation incubator and collaboration arm across four Leidos business groups for capabilities such as DevSecOps, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
“As a large systems integrator, Leidos brings an extensive strategic partner and supplier network to every problem having adopted a vendor-agnostic, open architecture and best-of-breed approach and mindset to every government proposal,” Bender said.
Why Watch:
One of Leidos’ primary focus areas for 2019 focuses is to continue driving strategic partnerships with developers and providers of best-in-class capabilities. Bender will oversee efforts to further enhance customer relations with key influencers and decision-makers, cascading out to field locations supporting various large customers.
“I hope to drive increased coordination and collaboration within Leidos and across an extensive network of partners and suppliers and, finally, to create the conditions for advancing innovation in those areas where Leidos technologies and solutions align well to customer needs, wants, challenges and opportunities,” he said.
Check out the entire Top 10 DOD Executives to Watch list here.