Cyber experts

Five GovCon Experts in the Cyber Mission Sector

The U.S. government procures cyber products and services to modernize systems, improve services, enhance security, promote overall efficiency and keep up with changing times. The U.S. military, for instance, is increasingly relying on cyber capabilities like live, virtual and constructive platforms to modernize warfighter training while minimizing costs.

A 2021 study from IBM, which included findings from the Government Accountability Office, found that a significant number of government IT systems need to be modernized. To this extent, cyber-focused companies support agencies in their digital modernization efforts, in addition to their goal of delivering cyber and cybersecurity products and services.

The Potomac Officers Club – a division of Executive Mosaic – presents five government contracting experts in the cyber mission sector.

Richard Bodson, President and CEO of SysNet Technologies

Richard Bodson is the president and CEO of SysNet Technologies, a small business located in Oakton, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., that provides cybersecurity services to government customers. Bodson, a Potomac Officers Club member, is responsible for expanding SysNet’s presence in the federal cybersecurity and overall information technology services markets. He is president of the Bodson Group, an entity he formed in 2016 to acquire SysNet. As president, he provided advice and strategic planning support to various enterprises. Bodson is a seasonal ambassador for ConnectPreneur, a company that organizes networking events for business leaders, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Previously, he was president of Subsystem Technologies, overseeing client satisfaction, business growth, employee development and overall execution of strategic plans. Bodson was briefly an independent consultant for executive leadership in small and medium-sized contractors in federal IT and management consulting.

He has held leadership roles at several firms throughout his career, serving as executive vice president for NetStar-1, chief operating officer of AVIEL Systems, senior director at General Dynamics IT and VP roles at FC Business, RSIS and DynCorp Information and Enterprise Technology. He had also spent 14 years as a senior program director at EDS and three years as a senior patent editor at International Computaprint Corp.

Bodson earned a graduate certificate in business administration and general management from the George Washington School of Business. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia.

Gary Barlet, Field Chief Technology Officer for the Federal Segment at Illumio

Gary Barlet, a Potomac Officers Club member, is the field chief technology officer at the zero trust segmentation company Illumio‘s federal segment.

According to Illumio, Barlet has nearly three decades of experience in cloud, cybersecurity and network management across the Department of Defense. He is also well-versed in managing multibillion-dollar budgets and programs.

He supports clients in the federal sector to meet zero trust security objectives and oversees Illumio’s efforts to grow its federal business portfolio. Barlet has been with Illumio since May, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before joining Illumio, Barlet served as the chief information officer at the U.S. Postal Service‘s Office of the Inspector General for 10 years. In this position, he led pandemic relief oversight efforts, implemented artificial intelligence and machine learning application capabilities and developed a cloud migration roadmap for the agency.

Prior to working at the USPS, he served in various units within the U.S. Air Force. He was the chief of communications support at the Air National Guard, the chief of the branch of the terrestrial network at the Air Force’s Office of Warfighting Integration and the commander of the 47th Communications Squadron.

He started his career in the Air Force in 1992 as a basic communications training officer at the Air University in Kessler Air Force Base.

Barlet holds a master’s degree in organizational management from George Washington University, a master’s degree in military applied science from Air University at Maxwell AFB and a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from the University of Central Florida.

Tanesia Barrow, President of Barrow Wise Consulting

Tanesia Barrow serves as the president of information technology and management consulting firm Barrow Wise Consulting. In the said role, she leads the firm and is responsible for developing new transformative solutions. Barrow founded the company in 2012 after more than a year working as a senior business development manager at Lockheed Martin’s IT business unit where she was in charge of seeking new clients in the health and life sciences civilian federal government market and creating proposal strategies, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Prior to Lockheed, she served in the maintenance, repair and overhaul software development company Robbins-Gioia for nearly six years as director of business development. Her responsibilities included implementing high-level sales strategies, developing white papers or requirement documents that addressed customer needs and presenting Robbins-Gioia’s capabilities to chief information officers, chief financial officers and top administrators of government agencies.

Her decades-long career also included time spent serving as regional sales manager at Dekker, as federal sales manager at Mindjet and as a business consultant at Dun & Bradstreet.

She established Barrow Wise with an aim of solving federal government challenges using emerging technologies. The company serves the Department of Defense, civilian agencies and large commercial health systems, providing them with cybersecurity, contextual identity access management, data analytics and robotics process automation, among other services.

According to Barrow Wise, its offerings, including the 4D-hyper situational awareness application and the self-healing supply chain solution, have helped clients achieve cost and labor reductions.

Jason Smith, Strategic Account Manager for the IC and DOD at Palo Alto Networks

Jason Smith is the strategic account manager for the intelligence community and the Department of Defense at Palo Alto Networks. Specifically, Smith is responsible for driving IC and DOD purchases and adoption of Palo Alto’s Cortex portfolio, a set of cybersecurity and threat detection and response applications.

From April 2008 to February 2022, he was a reserve member of the U.S. Marine Corps, holding the position of deputy director of the Marine Cryptologic Augmentation Program. Smith led intelligence integration efforts in support of USMC and Joint Force commanders through several mission sets, according to his LinkedIn profile.

From 2019 to 2021, he was a national security consultant at McKinsey and Company, lending support to senior military leadership on managing the execution of transformational and business operations studies, among other tasks.

Before McKinsey, Smith held several roles within the government. He was chief of staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2015 to 2019, overseeing the president’s daily brief. Prior to that, Smith worked with the Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst and staff officer supporting the J2 at NATO Special Operations Headquarters. He initially joined ODNI in 2008 as a manager, working at its National Counterterrorism and Operations centers.

Earlier in his career, Smith spent eight years as an active-duty member of the Marine Corps.

Smith earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, a master’s degree in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the U.S. Naval Academy. He also obtained a graduate certificate in international security from Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Other educational attainments include a command and staff college diploma from the Marine Corps University.

Jared Shepard, President and CEO of Hypori Virtual Mobility

Jared Shepard is the president and CEO of Hypori Virtual Mobility, a software-as-a-service company that offers cybersecurity and critical data protection through a zero trust/zero data-at-rest architecture. The executive is a U.S. Army veteran who previously served as lead technical planner for III Corps G6. He is the founder and board chair of veteran-focused nonprofit organization Warriors Ethos and also the founder and CEO of Intelligent Waves, which specializes in providing information technology and communications support to U.S. government customers, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Shepard launched Intelligent Waves in 2006 to support the operations of the Department of Defense’s Joint IED Defeat Organization. He played a key role in building the first Counter-IED Operational Intelligence Center within Multi-National Corps-Iraq and then integrated the COIC capability into each major command in Iraq and Afghanistan. The executive established Hypori as a spinoff company in 2021.

In a 2021 interview with ExecutiveBiz, Shepard said Hypori can support bring-your-own-device environments or work-from-home models with its ability to deliver a wholly functional yet secure capability to interact with data.

According to Shepard, the majority of BYOD is done with mobile device management that requires access to personal devices, causing privacy issues. With Hypori’s zero-trust architecture, environments for companies, projects or workgroups can be created with no privacy concerns and no data at risk.

Shepard and Hypori won several awards, including the George C. Marshall International Center 2021 Innovation Leadership award and two 2021 Gold Cybersecurity Excellence awards.

The CEO has more than two decades of information technology, federal services and sales experience, including time spent as lead technical planner of Blackhawk Management Corp., during which he was deployed as the lead tech adviser for Operation Iraqi Freedom II.

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The Potomac Officers Club is owned and operated by Executive Mosaic. Since 2002, Executive Mosaic has been a leader in media and exclusive senior executive networking programs primarily targeted to the U.S. federal government contracting (GovCon) marketplace. In addition to connecting executives of consequence into a fabric of like minded communities, the company’s growing cross-media platform serves as a leading source of news about the people, policies, trends and events shaping the nation’s GovCon sector.