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On October 23, TeraThink is returning to Virginia Tech to speak to the Thrive Living-and-Learning Community. Several members of our team are participating on a Career Panel to share with students their career experience while at TeraThink. Having recently graduated from Virginia Tech, I wanted to share my thoughts on why I decided to join TeraThink after graduation.
I first heard of TeraThink when I attended the University’s career fair this past January. As a second semester senior about to enter the real world, I was anxious to land a great job before graduation. In my search, I wanted to pursue a career that would allow me to continuously grow in a challenging environment and problem solve through creative thinking.
I was immediately taken with TeraThink’s passion for the work they do and the clients they serve. From my initial meeting with the recruiters and executives, to my interview, not even 3 days had passed to when I received my offer of employment. For a college student undergoing rounds upon rounds of interviews with other companies and agencies, TeraThink’s quick turnaround was refreshing.
Fast-forward several months into the job, I can say that choosing to start my career with TeraThink was the best decision I could have made. There are five things about TeraThink that prove it’s the right choice for me. These helped me make my decision to join their team of talented and driven individuals.
Last month I was accepted into the ACT-IAC Voyagers Program. This is a highly competitive leadership development program for rising leaders in government and industry (another term for the private sector). This intensive nine-month program matches 16 industry leaders with 16 government leaders. It focuses on collaboration and expanding understanding between the government and the companies that support the government.
The curriculum of the program is based off OPM’s Five Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs). Many federal agencies use ECQs for selection, performance management, and leadership development for management and executive positions. Additionally, entry to the Senior Executive Service (SES) requires ECQs. It is an honor to be a part of the 2019 Voyagers Class and work alongside the other 31 leaders throughout the program’s duration.
Today is the 10th annual Ada Lovelace Day. It is a day to take time to recognize the accomplishments of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The goal is to increase the visibility of women in STEM in order to create role models for future generations of STEM professionals.
Here at TeraThink, we have no shortage of role models. We wanted to shine the spotlight some of them. I asked them to share how they got started in the technology field and any inspirations they had.
On Sunday, September 23, TeraThink participated in the 2018 Walk to End Alzheimer’s for the second annual year. This walk is the largest event to raise awareness and donations for Alzheimer’s disease. The day might have been gloomy and rainy, but 600 plus people showed up anyway; strong and ready for the afternoon walk!
In preparation for this years walk, TeraThink raised money at its’ quarterly All-Hands event. This year, we went to Lucky Strike Entertainment for some good ‘ol fashioned bowling! Everyone who wished to participate donated to the Walk to End Alzheimer’s and highest score of the night took home a gift card. Win-win, if you ask me. On top of that, TeraThink leaders generously matched the bowling donations!
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Once again, I am attending the Information Governance Conference (InfoGovCon) in Providence, Rhode Island. In addition to the excellent content during the main conference, The Information Coalition team added two new components to the agenda, the Leadership Summit and CIO Breakfast.
I was honored to be asked to represent TeraThink and speak at the Leadership Summit. I shared many of personal lessons from my past and stressed the need for fresh leadership in the industry. However, I want to take a moment to share what some of the others discussed during the events. (more…)
Almost a year ago, TeraThink and Dominion Consulting merged. It seems like a good time to look back on what we have achieved.
Just because this is going to be hard is not a reason to not do it.
While I know it’s a double negative, it turns out it was exactly the right statement to make early and often. We got here relatively innocently – a casual, almost easy, conversation between entrepreneurs about the future of our respective companies. However, accurately predicting how the next year or so would go would have been impossible. We knew the merger was going to be difficult and complicated, sure, but it played out to be much more than that.
The pursuit of a successful merger and integration is an exercise of incredible loads of work, constant distraction, some elation, occasional frustration (insert sarcastic emoji here), and every other emotion in between. I can genuinely state that the process of closing the deal and then integrating these two great companies was both – one of the most difficult, and one of the most rewarding achievements of my career. Recognizing that the merger trend in our industry is not slowing down, we wanted to share a few of our key lessons learned and critical success factors from our experience with this merger.
I’ve been speaking a lot about content services of late. At TeraThink, we are a big believer that good content services are a solid foundation for excellent user experience. This is why I’ve been focused on dispelling some of the hype around content services. One of the reasons I, and TeraThink, have been trying to push past the hype is because we are actively using content services to deliver solutions at scale.
Along the way, we’ve been trying to share some of our lessons. James Fintel shared what we’ve learned about building content services agilely using Kanban. What I wanted to share was some of our lessons on the delivery of content services to a government agency.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded TeraThink a prime position on the Improved Dashboard Analytics and Workflow Support (IDAWS) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA). We are excited to apply our Information Management and Predictive Analytics expertise to enhance the tools used by DoD for decision support.
This award extends our long history providing financial management expertise to the DoD. Valued an estimated $140M over 5 years, winning this multi-award BPA is a testament to our team’s excellence supporting the DoD.
TeraThink had the pleasure of attending the 2018 Association of Government Accountants (AGA) Professional Development Training (PDT) in Orlando, FL. This massive event had over 2,000 attendees between July 22-25. Our small group included Jim Levitan, Howard Campbell, Leslie Hubbard-Darr, Matt Duffy, Rodney Taylor, Todd Barber, and myself.
This year, traveling to Orlando proved to be more challenging than planned. Many people, including myself, experienced several hours of delays. Even in the midst of a slow start, the AGA managed to pull off a spectacular event. Despite arriving at 2 a.m. due to delays, Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General, GAO demonstrated quick wit and amazing recall of stats throughout the opening plenary session.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded TeraThink $10M for Organizational Change Management and Business Process Reengineering. Awarded as part of the USDA Shared Services Lines of Business Solutions (SSLOBS) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA), our expansive financial management and modernization experience is directly relevant to USDA objectives. This experience was key to our winning these task orders. (more…)