In a competitive government contracting market, companies are working to strategically, efficiently and receptively grow — while sustaining best business practices and a talent-retaining culture. These mission-oriented private companies serving federal defense and civilian agencies may vary in size and solutions but relate in strong financial leadership driven by federal missions and customer needs. And to excel in a thriving GovCon market, companies rely on a few things: mergers and acquisitions, strategic growth initiatives, strong operations and smooth integrations.
All that can’t happen without strong financial leadership. For WashingtonExec’s Top 10 Chief Financial Officers to Watch in 2020 list, we identified the best of the best in private companies putting long-term growth, strategy and profitability first, based on their accomplishments, impact on internal financial and operational goals, and vision for the near-term future — bringing exactly what the GovCon community needs to empower competition and success.
Bob Deegan
Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Array Information Technology
Array Information Technology’s Bob Deegan has been instrumental in leading the company through one of the more difficult transitions in the federal IT industry: graduating from small business status. He and the leadership of ARRAY accomplished this while also executing a management buyout of the founding owner.
As CFO, Deegan is responsible for all day-to-day accounting, finance and contracts including internal and external financial reporting, budgeting, pricing for bids/proposals, corporate taxation, insurance risk management, financing and banking relationships, and compliance reporting.
In 2019, Deegan restructured ARRAY’s debt load, saving the company over $600,000 a year. In 2019, the company finalized five years of incurred cost audits by DCAA, with no financial impacts. As the company continues to evolve, Deegan oversees the increase of full and open contracts by 33% year over year. For the sixth consecutive year, ARRAY has maintained or increased revenue, while transitioning contracts out of the small business program.
Deegan has held senior executive positions in multiple companies specializing in government contracting since 1988. He has worked with 8(a) companies, graduated them and worked with large businesses. He holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Mount Saint Mary’s College and is active in the local soccer community, having run a soccer club for the past 18 years.
Why Watch:
Deegan continues to oversee ARRAY’s evolution into a paperless accounting environment — 100% of invoices are currently issued electronically, and all vendor vouchers are in an electronic format. In 2020, he will focus on the continued conversion of contracts from small business to full and open. He has positioned ARRAY to have its revenue mix grow to 65% full and open. He will oversee the continuation of debt paydown, without compromising investments necessary to achieve the company’s growth targets.
Gordon Foster
Chief Financial Officer, Constellis
2019 was a year that kicked off integration for Constellis and the nine companies making up its end-to-end risk management services portfolio. As chief financial officer, Gordon Foster oversees all financial strategy and operations, and he worked with his Constellis leadership colleagues to integrate the nine legacy companies and 13 separate business units under one organization.
These efforts created a four-division operational structure and a move to a single tool and single process environment for shared services, enabling synergies between previously siloed operations. Constellis plans to continue this strategic streamlining of internal operations through 2020. This includes systems integration that will allow the $2 billion company to be more cost effective, translating efficiencies into more competitive bids to support current and future customers and their missions. A change of this scale for a 22,000-employee company requires an investment in people, process development and technology — all priorities for the company this year.
Constellis is differentiated by the passion of its employees — a majority of whom are veterans of the military or law enforcement — and their willingness and ability to go where others won’t to safeguard people and infrastructure around the world, company leaders say.
Efficiencies in operations will maximize capabilities across the organization to provide customers with greater access to comprehensive security solutions, whether that’s background investigations, social intelligence, advanced training, logistics and life support, unmanned aircraft systems, K9 services, crisis response mitigation, or any combination therein.
Why Watch:
The future of Constellis will be one to watch as the company finalizes integrating its legacy businesses. By shifting resources, investing in more business development to support growth in adjacent markets and technology and with key hires to the management team, Foster is leading the way to drive profitable growth for Constellis in an ever-changing global environment.
Alicia Townes
Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, VT Group
Alicia Townes has been busy since joining VT Group as chief financial officer in early 2018, focusing on business operations and strategic growth. In this past year alone, VT Group acquired National Technologies Associates and DELTA Resources, enhancing its aerospace and naval engineering expertise and adding a collection of Naval Air Systems Command and Naval Sea Systems Command prime contracts to its portfolio.
“It was a great year,” Townes said. “We integrated two exciting new businesses, made investments in talent and upgraded our systems and processes to ensure VT Group continues to exceed customer expectations.”
VT Group also secured its core fleet modernization business, winning two 10-year contracts to integrate C4ISR systems afloat and ashore and was awarded a prime contract to maintain the presidential helicopter fleet for another five years.
Townes now manages the financial enterprise for a diverse but focused business that delivers full lifecycle engineering services to defense customers, including a growing portfolio of digital and IT modernization services. But it’s also clear people are her real passion.
“Whether at our offices here in the nation’s capital or on the decks of Navy ships and submarines, it’s amazing and inspiring to see what our employees are doing for our customers and their missions,” she said. “I love being a part of this family.”
Why Watch:
Don’t expect Townes or VT Group to slow down in 2020. With an injection of new capabilities, top-notch talent and key re-competes in the rearview mirror, VT Group will be an aggressive multidomain competitor. “We’re going into 2020 with a lot of momentum, and I’m excited to see our investments already delivering results for our customers, employees and shareholders,” Townes said.
Chuck Hicks
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer, NCI Information Systems, Inc.
Chuck Hicks joined NCI Information Systems, Inc. in May 2019. During his eight months with NCI, he has redefined and engaged the teams he leads — finance, contracts, security and facilities — to be more operationally focused. This includes getting these teams to rethink how they can help NCI grow financially. In a short time, his efforts are taking off.
“One of the greatest impacts I’m noticing is we are much more responsive and engrained with the business,” Hicks said. “We’ve made significant gains in our ability to respond to internal and external financial reporting requests. These improvements are a result of bringing in new leadership to the finance organization and integrating initiatives to improve operational excellence, efficiency, efficacy and performance.
Hicks has a proven track record of putting “people first” and believes in the importance of having direct engagement across the organizations he leads as well as throughout the enterprise. This is extremely important for mentoring, instilling a collaborative work culture, providing career advancement opportunities and increasing employee engagement, he says.
Why Watch:
As NCI CFO, Hicks plays a vital role in supporting the company’s growth strategy and is significantly involved in business development efforts, particularly in the bidding and pricing strategy as well as through relationships with industry. Over the past couple of years, NCI has invested significant resources into building a range of artificial intelligence capabilities through exclusive partnerships with commercial leaders to leverage cutting-edge emerging technologies, including robotic process automation, machine learning and code refactoring. With its AI framework, Shai, NCI has operationalized AI for its federal customers — and itself — to transform its work and empower its workforce.
In the coming year, Hicks looks forward to having more engagement with NCI’s customers and is excited to broaden conversations with members of the intelligence community.
“I am a firm believer that AI will do wonderful things for government overall but its impact on the intelligence community will truly be disruptive and a game-changer,” Hicks said. “I’m equally energized about NCI’s initiative to expand our portfolio with digital transformation capabilities to help drive federal agencies’ digital transformation and IT modernization efforts forward and advance the mission of government.”
Mark Cabrey
Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, NT Concepts
In late 2019, Mark Cabrey joined NT Concepts as senior vice president and chief financial officer to help continue the company’s mid-tier rise in the GovCon community. NT Concepts enters 2020 on the heels of a $125 million full and open win on DISA ENCORE III, providing comprehensive agencywide IT service design and support to the Navy Housing Enterprise Military Housing II program.
Together with President and Chief Operating Officer Darin Powers, the senior management team and the board of directors, the company is “building incredible momentum” that will accelerate its ability to provide mission services for intelligence, federal/civilian and Defense Department customers, Cabrey said.
An IT company at its core, NT Concepts is aggressively attacking the data science market, having successfully operationalized enterprise AI and machine learning and other advanced analytical solutions to meet its customers’ data challenges.
Cabrey brings a unique perspective to his new role, having previously served outside of the financial field as president and chief operating officer for Phacil.
“Through my experiences, I’ve learned that to maximize their effectiveness and value to the company, finance executives must align with and have a deep understanding of the operational side of the business,” he said.
That approach, coupled with his successful track record as a COO and CFO, developing great teams and building strong relationships with partners and service providers, is a catalyst for NT Concepts’ growth.
Why Watch:
With the recent addition of new leadership, an expanded board of directors and the creation of three new P&L centers that more closely align to their customer base, 2020 is a transformative and aspirational year for NT Concepts.
“In my search for my next opportunity, the profile and culture of NT Concepts is exactly what I was in search of . . . a well-positioned, agile, progressive, customer-centric and employee-focused firm,” Cabrey said.
Pamela Rothka
Chief Financial Officer, Octo Consulting Group
Pamela Rothka joined Octo in 2019 and manages finance, accounting, contracts, pricing, HR and facilities. Under her leadership, Octo experienced 65% year-over-year revenue growth in 2019, and the acquisition and integration of a 125-employee business.
And in the last year, Octo saw a spike in efficiencies in almost every area of the infrastructure while creating a scalable organization. This included a redesign of the headquarters facility to modernize operations while enabling company growth as well as a redesign of Octo’s indirect rate structure that increased cost competitiveness.
Rothka also oversaw the strategic reorganization of HR by adding HR business partners and creating a top-talent program to identify and develop talent across the organization, as well as the implementation of a new financial system that streamlines operations, speeds time-to-close and improves scalability of processes that goes live mid-2020.
“We focus not only on customer success, but on the value to the end user as well,” Rothka said. “We believe that by keeping in mind the warfighter in the field calling in air strikes, we build better targeting software for the Air Force that executes strike authorization approvals much faster.”
Octo also places a strong emphasis on employee satisfaction and growth, providing challenging and dynamic opportunities for employees, and rewarding them with benefit packages and competitive salaries.
“Social engagement has always been at the core of our culture, thus we are able to attract and retain people focused on giving back to their professions and communities,” Rothka added. It’s the combination of focusing on the end user, on employee satisfaction and on technical acumen that makes Octo’s teams perform better.
And through oLabs, Octo’s internal R&D organization, the company devises innovative solutions to its customers’ problems at no direct cost to those customers — and is investing in emerging technologies to do so.
For example, Octo recently supported a proof of concept initiative with the Department of Health and Human Services that used blockchain to support mandatory, annual Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation filings to the Department of Homeland Security. CDM requires the filing of every agency’s network audit logs for review as a means to make sure malicious activity on federal networks is discovered and mitigated.
“Everyone thinks of blockchain in terms of bitcoin and cryptocurrency,” Rothka explained. “However, by leveraging blockchain’s innate provenance as a cybersecurity tool, we provided an innovative solution to HHS that saved its CDM auditors months of time auditing the more than 10,000 audit logs that were filed.”
And it’s innovative solutions like this one that can make a difference in an agency’s operations — and why Octo is investing millions of dollars in oLabs.
Why Watch:
In 2020, Octo will continue to focus on M&A as it looks to augment its current capabilities with other innovative firms where the cultures and priorities align. Operationally, Rothka and the executive leadership team will continue to drive internal efficiencies and prepare the organization for scale while maturing business processes, customer support and reducing operational costs.
“As it has been for the last 13 years, we will remain 100% focused on our customers’ success,” she said. “Our passion for helping modernize our government to drive efficiencies and excellence into their operations will always be our primary focus.”
David Adams
Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, CNSI
David Adams joined CNSI in October 2019 to lead its finance and accounting function and to help develop a capital structure to support CNSI’s organic growth and acquisition objectives. He brought more than 20 years of experience with him to do so. For most of 2019, Adams was the CFO of Arlington Capital Partners portfolio company Endeavor Robotics. The former military and defense unit of iRobot was later sold to FLIR Systems for $385 million.
But what differentiates CNSI from its competitors, according to Adams, is its advanced Medicaid Management Information Systems.
“We are the first to develop a web-centric, real-time, cloud-based, modular MMIS solution that meets CMS guidelines for states,” Adams said.
And to strategically advance federal missions, Adams focuses on operational performance by providing financial metrics and strategies to ensure the customer and company goals are achieved. He’s also ensuring sound compliance practices so customers have confidence in CNSI as a chosen team member.
Why Watch:
In 2020, Adams is all about enhancing an “already great company” to position CNSI for future organic and inorganic growth by focusing on people, processes and systems deployed throughout the global footprint of CNSI. He’s also working with the executive team to sharpen long-term growth strategies and finding areas to increase CNSI’s enterprise value.
Bruce Crowell
Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, SOS International LLC
Bruce Crowell has been with SOS International LLC since 2003 and has more than 45 years of leadership experience in the government defense and technology markets. In 2019 alone, he was heavily involved in SOSi’s acquisition of Vykin Corp., which marked the fourth significant acquisition for the company in four years.
Following the acquisition, SOSi completed a large-scale corporate restructuring to align its businesses with its core customer markets.
“As part of the reorganization, we were able to eliminate several legacy HR, payroll and financial systems by integrating them into single enterprise solutions,” Crowell said. “The consolidation removed redundancies and generated efficiencies that we are now using to drive down costs and be more competitive in our contract bids.”
And despite its acquisitions and reorgs, SOSi remains a private family-owned and -operated firm, the largest of its kind in the defense services industry, according to Crowell.
“We have never competed for and won any small business set-aside contracts, and we have managed to become one of the largest integrators in the federal market without the help of outside investors,” he added. “That’s not to say that outside investment is bad, but it does say something about the level of commitment, faith and confidence we have in our business.”
But what really makes SOSi special for Crowell is its corporate culture and dogged pursuit of growth.
When Crowell joined SOSi 17 years ago, the company was primarily a language services company providing translators and interpreters to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the U.S. Customs Service (now Homeland Security Intelligence). It has since grown from providing linguists to support global Army operations in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to providing intelligence analysis supporting tactical military operations and, eventually, moved to multidomain intelligence at the national and strategic level. SOSi has also acquired business specializing in data and image sciences and began investing in technology products.
In the past four years, SOSi has acquired five businesses ranging from network operations to software development.
“Fast forward to today: We are the leading provider of base operations services to the U.S. military in Iraq,” Crowell said. “We are among the leading DOD IT integrators, responsible for managing the Army’s largest regional cyber center in the U.S. and a $400 million program to build a global communication enterprise with our international allies. SOSi also manages the State Department’s payroll modernization program, and recently won the DIA’s Solutions For Intelligence Analysis III contract — while remaining an extensive language contractor.
“We accomplished this growth and diversification by being bold and creative — thinking outside the box to create new opportunities while solving complex challenges for our customers,” Crowell continued.
But SOSi is always looking for ways to enhance its business operations. Under Crowell’s leadership, SOSi is revamping its cost structures to create more flexibility in its bids while improving its price competitiveness. The company is also upgrading its internal control framework by expanding process documentation and benchmarking controls against accepted industry standards for identifying and controlling risks to ensure the organization is operating efficiently.
Externally, the company is growing its international footprint into the Pacific, Southwest Asia and Europe. Today, about one-third of SOSi’s employees work overseas.
“We are investing in pushing out our corporate infrastructure to better connect our employees around the world,” Crowell said.
Why Watch:
In 2020, SOSi is looking for ways to introduce more automation into its business systems to help improve workflows and reduce operating costs. The company is also developing more robust dashboard capabilities to provide its program teams and customers with a real-time understanding of the health and financial performance of its various programs.
And externally, SOSi will continue to have an aggressive acquisition and investment mindset, Crowell said.
“The integration of complementary leading-edge capabilities, through strategic partnerships and M&A, will continue to fuel SOSi’s long-term growth,” he added. “The company is always looking at ways to augment its portfolio of capabilities and deliver innovative, high-impact solutions that strengthen and protect national security.”
Barry Broadus
Chief Financial Officer, Dovel Technologies
Barry Broadus joined Dovel in August 2019, just weeks before the company closed its acquisition of Ace Info Solutions to diversify its client base and expand its market capabilities. Broadus jumped right in and worked with the team on all closing decisions and details and then took a leading role in the harmonization of the financial operations of the companies.
This effort dovetails into the CFO’s strategic initiative to migrate the three stovepiped finance and accounting organizations — Dovel, AceInfo and MSC — to a shared services model intended to create a more efficient and effective finance and accounting organization. This shared services initiative will include formalizing standard policies, processes and procedures across the finance organization.
And in May 2019, Dovel announced a capital investment partnership with Macquarie Capital. The capital infusion will be deployed to expand Dovel’s reach within the federal market through internal R&D, organic and new market growth, and strategic acquisitions — the first proof point being the AceInfo acquisition.
“Dovel has always been committed to finding ways to introduce leading-edge technology into government to help customers work smarter and make better use of their data,” Broadus said.
Today, the company is involved in several pilots and rollouts applying advanced technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain — pairing the technology experience with domain expertise in health IT, life sciences, public safety and grants management — to ensure solutions meet the needs of users and their environments.
And through its growth from a small to mid-size business, Dovel has maintained its focus on quality, employee satisfaction and agility, according to Broadus.
“Dovel applies strong rigor in software quality, with an industry-leading defect potential and defect removal efficiency that is measured and reported on an annual basis,” he said. “Dovel is selective in what business it pursues. It is a purpose-driven organization and workforce that takes on projects that have an impact on improving, protecting and saving lives.”
Why Watch:
Dovel is focused on organic growth through new business wins and successful recompetes in 2020. As CFO, Broadus is focused on improving the pace and depth of delivering key financial metrics to Dovel’s senior management and operations — an initiative that will enable faster, more informed decision-making that benefits outcomes for both the customer and Dovel.
Broadus is also homed in on improving the company’s cash efficiency. Since joining the Dovel team, he has more than doubled the company’s liquidity position. Broadus will also work with the executive team to support three pillars of focus across the company — innovation, customer success and employee growth — by ensuring the right resources are available to meet corporate goals.
Rich Sawchak
Chief Financial Officer, Novetta
Under Rich Sawchak’s financial leadership, Novetta completed its integration of Berico in 2019, while continuing to grow business organically at more than 20% and maintain market-leading profitability.
Sawchak is responsible for corporate finance, accounting, contracts, compliance, IT, security and treasury management and also serves as the corporate secretary. Novetta, which is solely focused on advanced analytics in areas like machine learning, cyber, identity, cloud computing and data at scale, has a customer base centered around the most significant national security mission sets, Sawchak said.
“We attract and retain the premier talent in the industry through creating an employee experience that starts during the recruiting process and is maintained throughout an employee’s tenure with Novetta that focuses on career growth and working on the most exciting projects in the federal government,” Sawchak said.
Plus, the company’s foundation is rooted in technology-enabled services. Novetta has continued to partner with customers in new technology development, while investing significantly in its own resources in machine learning, cloud computing and advanced cyber R&D.
“These combined investments ensure that we can solve our customers’ most challenging problems and maintain Novetta’s leadership position in advanced analytics,” Sawchak added.
Why Watch:
Novetta plans to continue to accelerate its growth trajectory through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions in 2020. And key to the initiatives will be to become a prime contract holder in two to three additional customer agencies, according to Sawchak.
