Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: ICF’s Nirmal Agarwal
Nirmal Agarwal Vice President, Data Analytics and AI Practice Lead, ICF Nirmal Agarwal’s biggest recent achievement has been helping accelerate ICF’s transition from AI exploration to AI operationalization to help clients deliver mission-critical programs more efficiently and effectively. Building on strong foundations in people, technology and innovation, Agarwal has focused on connecting those capabilities, moving
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Expression’s Abir Ray
Abir Ray CEO, Expression Abir Ray leads efforts to scale Expression’s VOR Platform and ARGUS multi-agent reinforcement learning system into production deployments across defense and intelligence community programs, while continuing to deliver on major prime contracts including the NTIA Federal Spectrum Data System and DISA SIS and MSP contracts. He also co-authored “Spectrum Aware Systems
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: MANTECH’s Brandy Durham
Brandy Durham Chief Data and AI Officer, MANTECH Brandy Durham has led the charge to bring together MANTECH and Elder Research into one unified data and AI practice. This integration combines deep expertise and innovative capabilities with mission scale to help clients move from ideas to practical, working solutions, she said. Creating MANTECH’s Overlapping Resource
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Babel Street’s Benji Hutchinson
Benji Hutchinson CEO, Babel Street Benji Hutchinson led Babel Street’s transformation into an AI-first company aligning product, technology and go-to-market teams around a shared vision and executing on it in less than a year. In May 2026, Babel Street launched Insights Investigator and introduced Agentic Risk Intelligence, replacing manual investigative workflows with governed AI agents
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Microsoft’s Carmen Krueger
Carmen Krueger Corporate Vice President, US Federal, Microsoft Carmen Krueger’s team helps agencies transform efficiency by embedding AI through solutions like Copilot directly into day-to-day government workflows. This enables agencies to automate routine work, accelerate insight generation and make faster, more informed decisions while maintaining control and trust, she said. By combining AI with secure
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: IBM’s Cesar Tavares
Cesar Tavares Partner, Emerging Technology Practice, CTO Office, IBM, US Federal Market A core member of IBM Federal’s CTO office, Cesar Tavares is steering key AI initiatives and contributing to the growth of the IBM oLabs federal innovation ecosystem, designed to close the gap between technological possibilities and operational realities. Tavares embraces the energy that
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Rhino.ai’s Christopher O’Connell
Christopher O’Connell Executive Vice President, Global Sales and Alliances, Rhino.ai Chris O’Connell runs go-to-market for Rhino.ai, a fast-growing D.C.-area startup making waves in agentic software modernization and spec-driven development. The company already boasts some of the largest global customers across financial services, energy and software industries, and is applying its commercial experience to mission-critical efforts
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Tyto Athene’s Cutter Brenton
Cutter Brenton Chief AI Officer, Tyto Athene Stepping into the CAIO role and leading Tyto Athene’s TALON team, Cutter Brenton’s biggest achievement has been redesigning and rebranding Tyto’s IP generation function around a core set of differentiated integration solutions that directly drive customer value. Brenton has also expanded the use of AI tools across Tyto’s
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: AWS’ David Appel
David Appel Vice President of Global Government, National Security and Defense, AWS David Appel had a defining 2025. In October, AWS launched its Secret-West Region, expanding classified computing capacity for defense and intelligence missions. Appel also secured the company’s $50 billion AI and supercomputing infrastructure investment, Amazon’s largest public sector commitment, accelerating federal innovation at
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: DMI’s Gary Wang
Gary Wang CTO, DMI Gary Wang leads the company’s AI vision, strategy and enterprise adoption, positioning DMI as an AI-enabled IT services leader across federal, state and commercial markets. He is responsible for driving the AI-First AI-Centric business strategy at the company. Wang oversees DMI’s Enterprise Offerings, which deliver enterprise-grade innovations for all DMI business
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: LMI’s Dr. Joe Norton
Dr. Joe Norton Chief Information Officer, LMI This year, Dr. Joe Norton’s team at LMI launched AI Hub, the company’s home base for accessing and using approved AI at work, built on the same secure-by-design principles they bring to federal customers. Every tool on the platform has been vetted, every access pathway is governed, and
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: RELI Group’s Jason Balser
Jason Balser Senior Director, AI & Data Strategy, RELI Group Inc. With Jason Balser’s leadership, RELI Group moved from AI interest to AI execution by building the internal strategy, governance, workforce enablement and solution frameworks needed to responsibly apply AI across federal missions. This includes launching RELI’s AI Foundations Learning Path, creating its AI Maturity
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: SAIC’s Max Thompson
Max Thompson Product Portfolio Director, SAIC Max Thompson helped lead the transformation of SAIC’s AI and data portfolio from mission-specific innovations into scalable products and enterprise capabilities that can be deployed across government customers. “Working alongside an exceptional team, we’ve matured proven technologies into reusable solutions that help organizations operationalize AI faster while reducing cost,
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Core4ce’s Rick Hubbard
Rick Hubbard Chief Scientist, AI, Core4ce Rick Hubbard’s biggest recent achievement was building AI literacy into the DNA of how Core4ce delivers for its customers, not as a buzzword but as a real capability that runs from its engineers up through how it shapes solutions. Over the past year, Hubbard has worked to make AI
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: CACI’s Rob Morris
Rob Morris Senior Vice President, Digital Transformation, CACI Since taking on his current role in November 2021, Rob Morris has spearheaded cross-functional projects to optimize insights and operational processes across CACI. During the past several years, he has been committed to making data more accessible, consistent and reusable across the organization. This work began with
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Revolutional’s Rod Fontecilla
Rod Fontecilla Chief Innovation and AI Officer, Revolutional The achievement Rod Fontecilla is most proud of is building and scaling Revolutional’s AI Labs innovation platform. Today, the platform hosts over 60 minimum viable products the company’s teams designed to support a wide range of missions across the federal government, from fraud detection to health research
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Amentum’s Sam Nazari
Sam Nazari Chief AI Architect, Amentum Sam Nazari’s biggest recent achievement has been establishing Amentum’s AI operating model, which includes an AI hub powered by a self-developed AI tool to manage, prioritize and track AI across the company while also providing AI governance, visibility and prioritization. Amentum also developed a secure AI enclave architecture that
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Rohirrim’s Steven Aberle
Steven Aberle Founder & CEO, Rohirrim For decades, the buy side and the sell side of defense acquisition have spoken past each other across a wall the system was built to keep standing. Rohirrim’s biggest recent achievement was building across it. The company launched UnifiedAcquire and completed the first platform to govern the entire continuum
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: Koniag Government Services’ Zach Curtis
Zach Curtis Vice President of AI Innovation, Fed/Civ, Koniag Government Services, LLC Zach Curtis spearheaded transformative AI initiatives across KGS and federal customers, most notably leading the Small Business Administration’s registration experience modernization and achieving a 40% AWS cost reduction, delivering nearly $5 million in annual savings. He architected and deployed enterprisewide agentic AI capabilities
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026: CGI Federal’s Victor Foulk
Victor Foulk Vice President, CGI Federal Victor Foulk led CGI Federal through a decisive leap from generative to agentic AI over the past year, solidifying the company’s position as a leading innovator for the federal government. With the AI era maturing and the quantum computing era evolving, Foulk is an instrumental leader in keeping his
Top AI Execs to Watch in 2026
No longer an emerging disruptor, artificial intelligence is an operational reality embedded across enterprise and government systems. Rather than existing as a standalone capability, AI today is woven into workflows, powering everything from decision-making and predictive analytics to cybersecurity, software development and customer experience. Generative AI has also accelerated how organizations interact with data, enabling
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