For Greg Baroni, leadership is about building a trust bridge ⏤ a two-way street to creating successful companies, relationships and legacies ⏤ which is what he’s done and what he aspires to do.
The longtime GovCon executive and philanthropist calls this time of his life his “Grateful and Blessed” tour as he reflects on his career, the uncharted territory and the endless possibilities of his future.
Today, the industry knows Baroni as the founder of Attain, LLC (whose federal business Maximus bought in 2021), and the founder and CEO of Attain Partners, Attain Capital Partners and Attain Sports and Entertainment. Yet, Baroni’s decades-long career that ultimately led to entrepreneurship (and sports ownership) was the sum of his passion for creating impact ⏤ well, perhaps after his first love of baseball.
Following the Right Passion
Growing up, Baroni had a dream shared by many young men: to be a baseball player.
“My dream was to be playing on the Los Angeles Dodgers against the New York Yankees in the World Series, and I’m coming up to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning,” says the California native. “It’s one of those childhood dreams (fantasies) where I imagined becoming that person in Major League Baseball, but the reality was that my talent didn’t catch up with the passion.”
Baroni knew no matter how much he loved the sport, that dream wasn’t happening. That left one huge, lingering question: What else was he going to do?
Today, he compares his thought process at the time to Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept in “Good to Great,” which centered around three things: What you’re deeply passionate about, what you’re good at and what you can make money doing.
“When you’re a kid, you’re not really thinking what is going to be a lifelong career,” Baroni says. So, he had to find another passion he could enjoy that also had an impact on him.
Equipped with good analytical, reasoning and problem-solving abilities and a desire to apply knowledge and skills to real-world settings, Baroni considered law.
As an undergraduate student at Citrus College (having won the school’s “Key of Knowledge” award for academic achievement) and later at the University of Southern California, Baroni initially decided to study political science as a gateway to law school.
Baroni grew up in the late 1960s to early 1970s ⏤ an era of activism and anti-establishment where members of his generation challenged those before them. He got involved with political campaigns, and eventually, ran them.
And while political science seemed to be a natural stepping stone, it wasn’t quite quantitative and practical enough. When Baroni stopped enjoying it, he shifted to economics ⏤ a union of both impact and his quantitative skills.
Baroni graduated with a degree in economics and later completed more than 60 units of graduate work under the same discipline. In fact, he studied under Professor Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve ⏤ an economic framework that showed the optimal tax rate for governments that would optimize the raising of tax revenues.
Baroni would later work with Laffer before realizing he didn’t actually want to become an econometrician. He found a new interest during his junior year: technology. And for his first job, he latched onto an opportunity with his alma mater in that realm ⏤ but the fundamentals of economics stayed with him throughout his career.
Finding Impact-Driven Work
The activism era spurred Baroni’s interest in making an impact, but the self-proclaimed “radical rebel” couldn’t find a job that suited him after college. He loved his alma mater, so he started with part-time positions around campus. First, as a part-time instructor teaching two courses on quantitative analysis and business computer systems. Later, he took on subcontract opportunities developing software applications for the central administration. That’s where he eventually landed his first full-time employment opportunity.
Baroni also had his first entrepreneurial stint during this time when he explored setting up a franchise of record company outlets/storefronts called Black Pizza, named after what thin vinyl records resembled in the 1970s. His students even assisted him in studying the target addressable markets, audience demographics and optimal locations for the franchise operations in Southern California. Unfortunately, the venture never launched, but the entrepreneurial itch did.
Concurrently, Baroni found a love for education.
“I really enjoyed what higher education meant to our society and how higher education in the U.S. was actually the envy of the world,” he says. “I could see myself having a career in higher education.”
Baroni loved working at USC and saw himself being a “lifer” there. He developed software applications for the university that included its first cost recovery system, its first grants management system and its first general ledger financial system. This experience exposed him to senior roles from a young age as he learned the business of higher education and networked in the field.
“What makes our higher education system so powerful is the fact that it’s inextricably linked with knowledge creation, the ability to move the frontiers of knowledge forward in the context of the research and development that goes on inside of a university and involving students,” he says.
But when his boss at USC left for KPMG (at the time known as Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co.), he eventually recruited Baroni. That’s when Baroni’s career outside the university started.
Defining a Career Core
Baroni refers to his 20 years at KPMG as the “core” of his career, and a critical cornerstone to his development process. Having an inquisitive nature and shaped by a quote from Robert F. Kennedy ⏤ “Some men see things as they are, and ask why, I dream of things that never were, and ask why not” ⏤ Baroni was fueled by the KPMG culture and the freedom to explore the “why nots.”
That’s what led to his successes at USC, and it’s what shaped him early at KPMG. Baroni wasn’t afraid to come forward and ask: “Why don’t we start thinking of the array of services we provide?”
When he joined KPMG, the practice’s portfolio had three basic offerings, but Baroni thought differently.
“Let’s decompose these offerings into the way our clients problem-solve, the way they would want to be approached,” he suggested.
From there, Baroni and his team created an entire portfolio of solutions for universities that allowed Baroni to grow quickly in his career. In just over six years, he became a partner. He was in his early 30s and feeling blessed for an accelerated path to entrepreneurial freedom to innovate solutions that KPMG would take to market.
But Baroni tends to think big.
“When you’re a young professional, your passion is ⏤ inside of the then-Big Eight ⏤ to become a partner,” he says. “But once I became a partner, I realized: ‘Oh, my gosh. That’s not the end of the journey. What about becoming a managing partner? Then a national managing partner? What about becoming chairman and CEO?’”
As his ambitions grew, Baroni got to know other mentors who shaped his development on that journey.
Launching Blackboard
KPMG empowered Baroni to cultivate his entrepreneurial and leadership skills. You can’t become a partner in consulting without building a business that aligns with the firm, after all.
He eventually became managing partner overseeing his business and growing other partners, then national managing partner ⏤ each role requiring unique growth in leadership.
“Those opportunities to lead are what helped me expand the horizon of my career opportunities,” Baroni says.
In the mid-1990s, with the birth of the internet, Baroni was an active participant in higher-education professional associations. Most of his experience until then had focused on the administrative side of a university and its related software applications.
But this got him thinking: “What if we went from the administrative side, which was where the bulk of our services and support had been, to the core education delivery side? What if we could reinvent education?”
Baroni began exploring these ideas with several visionaries from Educom, a professional association that served higher education in academic computing. One of the professionals at Educom proposed organizing a group of companies to form a consortium to study how to reinvent education. This meant leveraging the internet for teaching and learning by identifying the key enabling standards required to support interoperability and reduce friction in the adoption of learning ⏤ or designing an open architecture for online learning.
Baroni jumped right on board and offered up KPMG as the chair of that consortium ⏤ meaning Baroni could wield the influence of his team led by young visionaries, Matthew Pittinsky and Michael Chasen, to spearhead the effort and develop a prototype.
Though KPMG was positioned as the thought leader, its core business was audit, tax and advisory services, not software development. Enamored with the dot-com world at the time, Baroni and his colleagues saw it as an opportunity.
Enter: Baroni’s second entrepreneurial endeavor (remember Black Pizza?). With Baroni’s help, Chasen, Pittinsky and several others from KPMG’s young ed tech team left to launch a new company named Blackboard, LLC. They rented a brownstone in downtown Washington, D.C., right across from KPMG offices on M Street, enabling Baroni to guide and mentor his fellow founders during late evenings and over lunches and dinners.
Initially, it was agreed that Baroni would become Blackboard’s first CEO ⏤ but decided he needed to stay in his leadership role at KPMG as it was in the process of separating its consulting business from the parent.
From Education to GovCon
Baroni’s KPMG career ended soon after the bifurcation, leading him to the then-newly formed KPMG Consulting. Thirteen months later, KPMG Consulting braved the rough financial markets at the time with its long-awaited Nasdaq IPO debut in February 2001 under the ticker symbol of KCIN. Nine months later, Baroni departed KPMG Consulting as its senior vice president of public services and joined Unisys.
Baroni was convinced to make the jump by then-Unisys CEO Larry Weinbach. During Baroni’s interview, he even recalls Weinbach saying, “Greg, I want you to be part of my leadership team that’s going to return this company to relevancy by building the greatest technology consultancy on the planet.”
Baroni believed him. Plus, he wanted leadership at scale. Joining Unisys meant taking on a global leadership position ⏤ he’d go from national leadership overseeing a several-hundred-person group, to leading thousands of people worldwide.
“There was just so much more opportunity, and I would be under the helm of a leader that had a track record of incredible success,” Baroni says. So, he made the move Oct. 1, 2001. That’s how Baroni’s 7-year journey with Unisys started.
Baroni’s non-compete from KPMG meant he had to reinvent himself to a market leader most relevant to his new role: government. As Unisys’ president of federal systems and global public sector business, Baroni officially entered the government contracting market. Specifically, he chose to focus on homeland security, considering he joined Unisys just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“With a new federal department being created, [Transportation Security Agency] and cabinet department being established, government contractors were all pretty much on a relatively level playing field,” Baroni recalls thinking. “We had great success in building the homeland security business, and importantly, it launched Unisys back into relevancy, at least here in the government contracting market.”
During Baroni’s time there, Unisys was recognized as a top government contractor and he won multiple industry leadership awards, including Fed 100 and Fast Company’s Fast 50.
The Road to Attain
Under Baroni’s leadership, Unisys’ federal business saw much success and growth. However, once Weinbach’s tenure ended, the company experienced financial struggles that led Baroni and Unisys to part ways. After nearly 30 years of continuous work with nearly no breaks between jobs, Baroni decided to do something on his own.
Enter: Baroni’s third entrepreneurial endeavor.
On Jan. 14, 2009, Baroni and co-founder John O’Neill filed the paperwork to create what a year later became called Attain.
“During those first eight months, we would actually lay the foundation for a new company. And then on Aug. 28, we would officially open the doors,” Baroni says.
Aug. 28 holds special meaning to Baroni, too. In 1963, it was the day Martin Luther King Jr. led a march on the National Mall and gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“For me in founding the company, I ‘had a dream’ that we could be a new type of company for society, not only focused on shareholder wealth, but on impact ⏤ being a force for good, about everyone succeeding, starting with our employees, going out to our clients, the communities in which we live and work, and our partners that work with us,” Baroni says.
This marked yet another entrepreneurial opportunity for Baroni, who calls himself a “reluctant entrepreneur.” He still credits his time at KPMG for cultivating his entrepreneurial talents, and even calls this time an “incubation” period that eventually led him to founding Attain.
Still, Baroni says he had to be coached, urged and nudged to start a company at age 55. And while he doesn’t recommend waiting that long in one’s career, he says, “I feel immensely grateful and blessed, and that truly defines the way that I strive to live my life.”
Something Even Greater
While laying the foundation for Attain, a significant opportunity presented itself to Baroni ⏤ to reclaim the remaining assets left from the BearingPoint (formerly known as KPMG Consulting) estate and leverage it as a platform business to catapult the newly established consultancy.
But positioning the company for this opportunity and building Attain didn’t come without its challenges.
In 2009, the country was still in one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression. Access to capital was hard to come by. Attain had three failed closings in its attempt to acquire these remaining assets before succeeding on the fourth.
Perseverance, partners and partnerships were key. Baroni runs on faith, hope, trust and teamwork, and leads with a few core values: invent the future to inspire hope; be bold and courageous; and overcome challenges, obstacles and hardships by improvising, being creative and persevering.
“It’s the commitment to execute to get there,” Baroni says.
These values have carried Baroni and Attain through much success. In 2020, with the dawn of a new decade, the onset of the pandemic and concern about the future of the federal business as a mid-tier government contractor (sometimes referred to as the “Valley of Death”), Baroni and his board decided to explore strategic options for the federal business.
In March 2021, Attain announced its restructuring and the sale of its federal business to Maximus. The education, nonprofit, health care, and state and local government division remains privately owned and operates under the name Attain Partners.
“I really believed that we could take the remaining business and continue the journey,” Baroni says.
It was quite the transition, though. Selling federal meant selling over 90% of Attain’s assets, leaving the business just shy of 70 people, including the administrative staff.
Immediately after the sale, Baroni knew Attain’s next chapter meant investing in an asset-based consulting approach to differentiate the company from competitors. And through that process, Baroni realized the acquisition opportunities and culture of the kinds of companies they were looking into were so distinctly different from Attain that there needed to be another way to invest in these companies without necessarily integrating them into Attain.
That’s what led to the official founding of Attain Capital Partners, which Baroni says would “take advantage of life passions” and adhere to a resulting non-compete.
For Baroni, those passions continue to be education, giving back and sports.
“I was looking for an opportunity, another way that we could help grow and mentor other companies that were, what I call, at the right inflection point for accelerated growth,” he says.
Attain Capital Partners is a private-equity firm that invests in early-stage growth companies and their respective management teams enabling them better serve their markets.
“We focus on serving the underserved,” Baroni explains. Think government and education technology clients with technology-enabled solutions and services. It targets founder-led businesses with growth potential that will benefit from Attain Capital’s support and expertise to scale and optimize the business.
So far, the firm has made strategic investments in four companies: Safal Partners, Cardinality.ai, Regent Education and Infotek Consulting.
And while Baroni couldn’t live out his childhood dream of playing in the World Series, he’s still found a way to incorporate baseball and sports into his entrepreneurial endeavors.
“With the sale of our federal business came this opportunity: What about becoming an owner in something you were deeply passionate about?” Baroni says.
Enter: Attain Sports and Entertainment ⏤ Baroni’s sports management holding company serving the National Capital Region and beyond.
“I wanted to be able to enjoy it, to experience it, much like I do with the work I do in this community,” Baroni says. “And if I was going to be an owner of a sports and entertainment franchise or franchises, I wanted it to be actively engaged in this Washington, D.C., metro area.”
Today, the company owns the Bowie Baysox; Double-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles the Frederick Keys; the collegiate summer baseball team of the MLB Draft League. And in November, it acquired an Atlantic League baseball team to be based in Frederick, Maryland. Baroni also plans to include additional teams ⏤ and potentially other sports ⏤ on his roster.
“Don’t think that we’re anywhere close to being done yet,” he says. “We’re looking for other opportunities right now, and for investors interested in bringing insanely great and affordable sports and entertainment to this region.”
The Grateful and Blessed Tour
Baroni’s career thus far has been filled with memorable moments ⏤ a part of his “Grateful and Blessed” tour. Those include developing KPMG as one of the preeminent services businesses focused on the higher-education market; helping create KPMG Consulting; re-establishing Unisys’ relevance into the broader technology and federal market; building Attain from the ground up; seeing the Attain name on one of the premier buildings in Tysons Corner, Virginia; and having Attain recognized as a “Best Firm to Work For” by The Washington Post and Consulting Magazine.
And while these were all important milestones, Baroni notes they’re all team successes.
“It’s my Grateful and Blessed tour, because so many people contributed to where I am today, and this recognition provides a platform by which I can publicly acknowledge and thank some of the many people who have had such positive impacts on my journey to date,” he says.
“I simply would not be where I am today without all of those who supported, worked for, stood beside, challenged, taught, listened to, mentored, believed in and partnered with me.”
Baroni leans heavily on his faith and says his first mentor and inspiration is God. A very close second is his wife, Camille.
“She’s my closest counselor and the person to whom I go to for everything,” he says. “I respect her immensely ⏤ she’s just such a clear thinker and such a great leader in her own right.”
Next is Ellen Walsh, his most trusted confidant, who’s worked with Baroni since the late 1990s, choosing to skip the Unisys chapter, but having the faith to join the company before it launched.
“She’s the ambassador of the company’s core values and its culture that we refer to as the Attain Way,” Baroni says. “At times, I refer to her as the CEO, the chief everything officer.”
As he grew into leadership, Baroni points to the early-career influence KPMG’s (later BearingPoint) Dan Hamlin and David Newman had on him at the time. KPMG’s former CEOs Rand Blazer and the late Jon Madonna also heavily developed Baroni as a leader.
“Jon gave me a sense of how a leader inspires from the stage, if you will. He and I developed a nice friendship,” Baroni notes. “He was a counselor, a mentor from a distance though as I was not a direct report to him.”
Blazer, he recalls, ultimately did much of the heavy lifting in building Baroni into the leader he is today.
“There’s no question that I am here today in part due to the incredible influence, guidance and mentorship of Rand,” he says. “He taught me one of the most important lessons of leadership ⏤ relational equity.”
Other influential mentors in his life include Unisys’ former CEO Weinbach, who originally convinced Baroni to join; Anne Altman, retired general manager of IBM U.S Federal Government and Industries, who embraced, welcomed and connected Baroni as he transitioned into the federal contracting market; and many members of the Northern Virginia tech community, including Bobbie Kilberg, who led the organization for 22 years and the prestigious group of former chairs from Donna Morea to Rich Montoni.
The influential people in Baroni’s life believed in him to take Attain from concept to what it is today.
“There have been a lot of good people that believed in me, challenged me, pushed me, and frankly, just hung in there with me!” he says. “I’ve been blessed by these people, and yes, I am incredibly grateful to them.”
People are truly at the core of Baroni’s professional passion. Along with receiving influential mentorship, Baroni has also been a mentor. He’s particularly proud of what he calls his “coaching tree,” or leaders whose careers he helped cultivate.
“I always say, leadership is all about building the trust bridge, and it goes two ways,” Baroni says. “You have faith in them, they have faith in you and that synergy produces the miracle of success. I’m very blessed like that.”
Some have been with Baroni through KPMG, Unisys and Attain. The success of Attain’s federal business wouldn’t have been possible without the leadership of Manish Agarwal, and the success of Attain Partners today isn’t possible without the leadership of Mark Davis. Both have worked with Baroni since their KPMG days.
“I had the privilege of leading and mentoring another KPMG alum, Alicia Karam Harkness, who today is at the helm of Guidehouse’s health business as their segment leader,” Baroni says. “I had the good fortune to recruit Ted Davies to Unisys and he became my successor there, later becoming the CEO of the private-equity-backed company, Altamira, and who today is the lead operating partner for Attain Capital Partners.”
Another Unisys leader who has gone on to significant leadership roles is Toni Townes-Whitley. And for Baroni, the list goes on.
“Success isn’t enduring unless you can excel at succession, so like I said, I’m incredibly blessed and grateful to these and others who I’ve had the honor and privilege to lead,” he says.
Baroni adds they were fortunate to have Attain’s federal business go to Maximus under the leadership of CEO Bruce Caswell, “one of our region’s most inspirational leaders and who has significantly driven the growth of their business and is the first vice chair of NVTC (and my likely successor),” he says.
Part of being grateful and blessed means giving back.
“I just feel like it has always been part of my soul, if you will, to know that it’s important to help those less fortunate, to help those in need, to champion those who need a voice, and I want to use my resources to compel the opportunities for me to do so,” Baroni says.
Baroni’s journey started with a cause near and dear to him. Sadly, kidney disease struck close to home and contributed to his father’s death, so Attain began a charitable giving program to the National Kidney Foundation serving the National Capital Area. Baroni served on its board for 10 years receiving the distinction of its Lifetime Achievement Award. His philanthropic giving then expanded to the American Red Cross and the Fairfax, Virginia-based Women’s Center, and eventually, to include organizations like the Equal Justice Initiative and the Capital Area Food Bank.
“This is part of being grateful, sharing with a joyful heart to those that are less fortunate,” Baroni says. “Camille and I continue to look for opportunities to create impact through philanthropy ⏤ watch for some announcements on this front to be shared in the coming days!”
The Next, Next Chapter
Much like the progression of Baroni’s career, the sky is the limit for what comes next. He’s gone from playing baseball in the independent leagues to dismissed radio weather broadcaster in Southern California, to youth sports coach for all his six children, to CEO and entrepreneur and everything in between, after all.
His destiny, Baroni adds, is uncharted territory. But what is clear is his focus on impact and legacy.
“When we founded Attain, one of the BHAGs I used to use is: This has got to be a company that’s here 100 years from now,” Baroni says. “Built-to-Last.”
Plus, there’s much more work to be done, and Baroni doesn’t seem to be slowing down. As long as he’s capable, Baroni says he’s committed to making an impact on people’s lives.
So, while certain chapters in his life may have come to a close, Camille tells him, “Although you are being recognized with a lifetime achievement award, by God’s grace, you are far from having completed all that is left for you to do. Keep going!”
Baroni will be honored Nov. 30 with a Lifetime Achievement Award at WashingtonExec’s annual Pinnacle Awards, celebrating the career of an industry icon whose contributions to the GovCon community will live on for decades.