Our Team
Our team consists of experts and strategic advisors that have broad and more than 250 years’ collective experience within the Federal Market.
Leadership Team
Barry Grant
Co-founder and President
Barry has more than 20 years' experience with large Federal IT acquisitions, including all stages and details of business development, capture, teaming, proposal management, pricing, staffing, recruiting, scheduling, transition-in, execution/operations (program/project management), go-live, O&M, and transition-out. He is ITIL-certified and holds a Master’s Certificate in project management. He also has a strong understanding of Federal Government business and IT challenges as well as strong relationships with Federal senior leadership through his business development and delivery management experience.
Meet Our Team of Experts
Kent Armstrong
Senior Vice President, Infrastructure, Cloud and Enterprise Application SME
Kent has more than 40 years’ experience in IT operations. He served as the USDA Associate CIO for Data Center Operations and Enterprise Application Services. He led the OCIO effort to stand up a portfolio of fee-for-service, shared services, and cloud services including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. He has a BS in Animal Science and Industry.
Tony Capo, PMP
Senior Principal Consultant, Cybersecurity SME
Tony is an expert IT professional with 45 years’ experience within USDA and private industry who has provided executive leadership and program management on numerous USDA departmental Information and Cyber Security Enterprise initiatives. He has a BS in Business Administration and Marketing.
Lena A. Goodwin
Technical Proposal Writer
Lena is a professional writer with more than 30 years’ experience in Federal and non-profit proposal and grant writing, technical editing, proofreading, and market development with both public and private clients. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Policy.
Mike Rodgers
Senior Principal Consultant, Network SME
Mike was a career federal IT employee for more than 35 years. He started at the National Security Agency (NSA), moved to the USPS, and then went to USDA in 1988, where he stayed until retiring in 2012. He served as lead computer specialist, lead network specialist, and supervisor at both USPS and USDA. His experience includes managing government-mandated IT consolidations, relocations, and build-outs of industry best practices for hosting mission-critical applications for USDA, including the migration of GSA’s contracts from FTS2000 to FTS2001 and then to Networx. He managed and participated in the evolution of government IT infrastructure from large mainframe processing datacenters to distributed client/server platforms supporting Cloud computing.
Rubi Trujillo
Proposal Graphic Designer
Rubi's 10 years of proposal graphic design experience include data visualization and infographics. With the ability to successfully adapt and design for a wide breadth of industries, she has provided winning design services for proposal efforts aimed at civilian and defense federal entities, and state and local government agencies. Her experience includes not only adhering to government proposal specifications but also creating customized branded styles for proposals.
Carol B. Turpin
Proposal Manager
Carol is a successful proposal manager and writer with 30 years’ experience. She has helped to win $14.1B in funded contract value and $102.8B in IDIQ ceiling value across Federal Civilian, DoD, State, Local, and commercial markets for small, mid-size, and Fortune 100 clients. She holds a Master’s in English.
Carl Zulick
Senior Principal Consultant, GIS SME
Carl is a senior business development specialist with more than 40 years’ experience at DOI and USDA. He has expertise in strategic planning, Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), land use planning, environmental analysis, IT modernization, governance, and business process reengineering. He has an MBA and a Master’s in Landscape Architecture.
Deana Hicks
Senior Principal Consultant, Federal Acquisition SME
Deana Hicks is an acquisition professional with over 20 years of Federal government experience. She is a retired leader with cradle-to-grave contracting experience for a wide range of professional services and products. Deana has extensive knowledge and direct experience of USDA contracting processes and procedures. After working at GSA with the Schedules program, she worked as a Contracting Officer at FNS for 3 years and held multiple key positions during her nearly 10-year tenure at Forest Service, including Branch Chief for National Contracts, Acting Assistant Director for National Procurement, and detail as the Branch Chief of IT Contracting.
Clint Swett
Senior Principal Consultant, Federal IT SME
Clint is an experienced executive-level leader and manager with skills developed through both civilian government and military experience. He has demonstrated expertise in life cycle management, information technology (IT) operations, change management, strategic planning, requirements management and analysis, technical architecture design and analysis, and cybersecurity. Clint has a strong analytical ability to consistently produce innovative IT solutions for complex and ever-evolving enterprise problems related to information and data management, security, financial management, and human capital. He has extensive knowledge and direct experience at the USDA, where he worked for 12 years, serving as the CTO and Digital Transformation Executive of FPAC for over 5 years. Before his time at USDA, Clint served as the Director of the Technology and Service Organization at the USMC Defense Finance Account Services.
Clay Cole
Senior Principal Consultant, Federal IT SME
Clay has over 33 years of progressive experience in Information Technology, working across various industries such as Federal Government, Transportation, Telecommunications, Financial, and Retail. His diverse technical background is complemented by proven executive leadership, business development, service development, and customer engagement skills. His innovative approaches to solution architecture, presentation, and proposal development have resulted in technology sales worth hundreds of millions of dollars, consulting service contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and annual operational cost savings worth tens of millions of dollars. With experience as both a technology vendor and customer, he provides a unique perspective on strategic planning for Digital Transformation and Cloud Computing Adaption. Clay holds a B.S. in Electronic Engineering Technology.
Mark Day
Senior Principal Consultant, Federal IT SME
Mark is an accomplished professional with over 30 years of experience in academia, public, and private sectors. He specializes in the intersection of public policy and information technology, both from a mission-driving role and in operations (cloud, security, etc.), and acquisition. He has a proven track record of success in leading IT operations, policy, and security for the federal government in Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) roles. As the former Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Integrated Technology Services at the General Services Administration (GSA), Mark provided direct leadership of Category Management implementation for the largest reseller of IT services and products to the federal government (GSA's Integrated Technology Service $23B in 2015). Mark holds a B.S. in Political Science from Southwest Baptist University.