Executive Spotlight: Jason Saldana of Modern Technology Solutions, Inc.

In this Executive Spotlight interview, the Potomac Officers Club sat down with Jason Saldana, defense services division vice president of strategic development at Modern Technology Solutions, Inc. Saldana discussed his career, his core leadership values and what it takes to lead a successful team. 

The MTSI executive was elevated to his current position in November, and he’s been with the company for more than seven years.

Potomac Officers Club: What can you tell us about your background and how you’ve been able to adapt to the ever-changing challenges of the federal landscape over the course of your career?

Saldana: I am a digital transformation champion with over 24 years of experience delivering MLS cloud computing and rapid digital capabilities to defense, IC and commercial customers. Adapting to changes is the guiding principle to the agile methodology — the more we focus on driving culture changes and education for our mission owners, the more successful digital transformation is. I believe that for mission owners to be successful with digital transformation, they need to adopt a fail-fast, learn-fast approach to capitalize on small strategic wins and learn from mistakes. An 80 percent solution delivered in half the cost and schedule can still save lives when embracing rapid digital acquisition.

POC: What do you believe are your core strengths as a leader and what lessons taught you the most about driving success?

Saldana: First and foremost, I believe my core strength as a leader is being an influential servant leader (in that order). With an extensive background in both mission and enterprise digital architectures and implementations, I believe in a holistic approach to leading digital execution teams. Enabling the success of digital teams is built around the awareness of the interconnectedness of all aspects of the digital threads that are woven together, championing the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

I have seen both success and failures at all levels of digital transformation implementation. What drives success is trusting our people we bring on as the experts to execute programs. There is absolutely no reason to hire an expert and turn around to micromanage them at every step of the way. Let your experts do what you hired them to do, and as a leader, provide vision and continue to remove any roadblocks slowing them down.

POC: What are the core values that you believe are essential to build a great team and establish a foundation to drive success in such a competitive industry?

Saldana: I believe employees must feel valued. Employees who believe their work, time and contributions are valued provide significantly more output than those that feel undervalued. Another core value to drive success in a competitive market is ensuring that employees feel empowered to own and solve customers’ problems. My teams work closely with our mission owners every day. I try to ensure they feel empowered to offer creative solutions to collaboratively overcome these challenges. Lastly, I try to highlight that our teams provide technical services to our mission partners. Communicating that we do not succeed unless our mission partners succeed helps to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

POC: With emerging technology influencing the federal government and industry more by the day, what are some of the challenges on the business side of innovation that aren’t always discussed as often as they should be?

Saldana: Changing culture is the biggest challenge on the business side of digital transformation for our mission owners, especially in multi-level security environments. I deal with customers and potential clients everyday who might think ‘our organization accrediting officials do not allow emerging technologies like cloud,’ or ‘we can’t trust cloud to protect our data.’ Once we solve some of these early hurdles through strategic engagements and education, the art of the possible starts to come into focus.