August 4, 2025 • 30 mins
Chad A. Kim is an accomplished CEO and technology executive known for driving transformative growth and operational excellence across the national security and advanced technology sectors. Over two decades, he has earned a reputation for rapidly identifying strategic opportunities and decisively executing high-impact initiatives, leveraging targeted mergers and acquisitions to accelerate capability development, scale innovative solutions, and deliver measurable results.
Currently serving as the founding CEO of Bcore, a private equity-backed company delivering cutting-edge solutions to the U.S. intelligence and defense communities, Chad successfully spearheaded the rapid integration of four distinct legacy companies—Bridge Core, GeoYeti, teKnoluxion, and 2 Twelve Solutions—into one cohesive, high-performing entity. Under his leadership, Bcore drove significant operational efficiencies, enhanced resource utilization, accelerated revenue growth, and secured pivotal strategic partnerships.
Previously, as a founding executive and CTO at Avantus Federal, Chad helped scale the startup rapidly through aggressive organic growth and strategic acquisitions, culminating in its $600 million acquisition by QinetiQ. His leadership in identifying and integrating eight critical acquisitions significantly enhanced Avantus’s technical capabilities, expanded market presence, and enabled the development of innovative solutions in AI/ML, cyber, and intelligence—delivering exceptional returns and strategic value for stakeholders.
Chad’s leadership philosophy is anchored in integrity, relentless execution, accountability, continuous innovation, and human development. He uniquely combines strategic vision with tactical precision, empowering teams to confidently and swiftly tackle complex challenges. Deeply committed to 360-degree mentorship, Chad invests considerable time understanding and celebrating team members at all levels, ensuring everyone feels valued, motivated, and fully engaged in achieving the mission.
His expertise extends broadly across AI and machine learning, geospatial-temporal analytics, cybersecurity, HUMINT, counterterrorism, and counter-proliferation technologies. He is particularly adept at transforming service-driven businesses into agile, scalable, solution-oriented enterprises that deliver enduring value. Chad holds an MS from the University of Virginia and a BS from Middle Tennessee State University. Beyond his professional endeavors, Chad remains passionate about mentorship, strategic innovation, and forging impactful relationships that drive organizational and personal growth.
Currently serving as the founding CEO of Bcore, a private equity-backed company delivering cutting-edge solutions to the U.S. intelligence and defense communities, Chad successfully spearheaded the rapid integration of four distinct legacy companies—Bridge Core, GeoYeti, teKnoluxion, and 2 Twelve Solutions—into one cohesive, high-performing entity. Under his leadership, Bcore drove significant operational efficiencies, enhanced resource utilization, accelerated revenue growth, and secured pivotal strategic partnerships.
Previously, as a founding executive and CTO at Avantus Federal, Chad helped scale the startup rapidly through aggressive organic growth and strategic acquisitions, culminating in its $600 million acquisition by QinetiQ. His leadership in identifying and integrating eight critical acquisitions significantly enhanced Avantus’s technical capabilities, expanded market presence, and enabled the development of innovative solutions in AI/ML, cyber, and intelligence—delivering exceptional returns and strategic value for stakeholders.
Chad’s leadership philosophy is anchored in integrity, relentless execution, accountability, continuous innovation, and human development. He uniquely combines strategic vision with tactical precision, empowering teams to confidently and swiftly tackle complex challenges. Deeply committed to 360-degree mentorship, Chad invests considerable time understanding and celebrating team members at all levels, ensuring everyone feels valued, motivated, and fully engaged in achieving the mission.
His expertise extends broadly across AI and machine learning, geospatial-temporal analytics, cybersecurity, HUMINT, counterterrorism, and counter-proliferation technologies. He is particularly adept at transforming service-driven businesses into agile, scalable, solution-oriented enterprises that deliver enduring value. Chad holds an MS from the University of Virginia and a BS from Middle Tennessee State University. Beyond his professional endeavors, Chad remains passionate about mentorship, strategic innovation, and forging impactful relationships that drive organizational and personal growth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Raft M and T Bank presents CEOs you should know
power by I heard. Let's meet Chad Kim. He is
the CEO of V Corps, headquartered in Reston, Virginia. Vcorp
brings together elite teams of engineers, analysts, and technologists who
rapidly transformed complex challenges into precise, impactful solutions for the
national security community. Before we talk more about Chad's company,
(00:21):
I first asked him to talk a little bit about himself,
where he's from, and his origin story.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I've definitely lived a lot longer outside of where I
grew up. So you know, my father was enlisted in
the army and he was using the GI bill to.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Go to school.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So you know, I was born actually in Fayetteville, North Carolina,
outside of and you know, spent a lot of time
in Mississippians and other places growing up, and ended up
in outside of Nashville, Tennessee, you know, studying music business
and courting industry or audio engineering, which is crazy because
at that time, this is like the late eighties, early nineties,
(00:57):
I mean, you had gruns, you had a lot of art,
you had real world you know, an MTV, and it
kind of it defined kind of my whole being because
it taught me like that this value of like self
identity and authenticity and hard work. And I know that's
kind of you know when you think back to like
nineteen ninety three, you know, you had Kirk Cobaine and
(01:19):
all these other influences, but there was this hard work
aspect to it, because like you know, as you're listening
to those artists, it's like, wow, how did that twenty
five year old get to that level? And then you
start kind of reading and learning about that. There weren't
books or in articles back then. It was like magazine
articles and you would hear their origin stories and so anyways,
(01:40):
like sorry for that tangent, but like but that that
kind of defined just my let's just go, let's just
go do something. So after I graduated, I wanted to
go to law school, and I decided to take a
break before so I went to South Korea taught English
for a year, which definitely was funny because it's probably
like Robin Williams, like, you know, good morning Vietnam. But
(02:00):
I definitely you know, whoever I taught English, they probably
you know, they didn't learn or they're not speaking well
these days. But you know, this was right after nine
to eleven, so that was always top of mind. And
so it's somewhere along that journey when I was there
in South Korea, you met some friends and ended up
supporting the intelligence community and you know, its overseas for
a good portion of that time.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So that's my origin story.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, let's talk about that pivot from from music to
kind of super secret stuff. That's a really big change.
So i'd love to hear, not necessarily the origin of it.
And of course we're going to talk a lot about
Becore in your current company and what you're doing as CEO,
and all the amazing things that are happening right now
in the industry and the kind of world that we're
living in. But talk about that pivot, because I think
in this series we've talked to a lot of people
(02:44):
that won't surprise you, Chad, that have made these amazing
pivots where they've started in this direction and gone just
did a one eighty to whatever they do now, and
so it's not it's not a big surprise to us,
But why the pivot for you?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, I think Mike Tyson famously said, like everyone has
a plan until you get punched in the face, that's right.
And there are a couple of punches, right, Obviously there's
nine to eleven. But even before that you had m
P three's and Napster and all those other services that
you know, pretty much decimated that industry.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Right. So you know, here I here.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I was about to graduate school, you know, and turning
at different record companies and all this other stuff. And
you know, my my mentors or advisors like, hey, you've
better focus on music publishing in transaction, you know, copyright law,
because that's actually where.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
The money is going to be, you know, in this time.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
And and you know I told my parents, I say, hey, look,
I'm gonna go do this over here, like and and
also is this Jack Kerouac in me of just wanting
to kind of see the world and experience the world
on my own terms, not not in the warm you know,
security blanket of my family and this other stuff. So
so so I made that jump. And then you know,
(03:53):
after nine eleven happened, you know, same thing, right, boom,
world's changed.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Okay, what what kind of control? What can I not?
Is there something I can do? Personally?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
You know, because again, when you're young, you have unlimited time,
and you're able to make a little bit riskier decision,
you know, profile than you would leader as an adult,
especially if you have children or family or anything those
other aspects. And so, you know, I think the thing
that characterized me and why I brought up the whole
music and that self identity and the hard work and
all those other aspects is just you got to be agile,
(04:25):
Like just like running water. You know, something comes, you
just go, you just flow around it. And you know,
I think that's kind of defined me, especially my earlier.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
In my career.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Just just roll up your sleeves, get it done, and
learn from it and try to teach others out of
the way.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's a good advice. Once again, it's a story we've
heard many times. So we're obviously here to talk about becore,
and I do want to hear the origin about the
company and such and what you've done so far, and
we'll get into mission and vision and programs, capabilities, all
sorts of different things. But you did a lot before that,
and I know there's some things that you can't talk about,
whether that you have to be vague about, but can
(04:59):
you talk about kind of leading up on all the
things that you did and then becore as it started.
Because I know that's a fascinating story too.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, No, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.
You know, during that time, you know the world was
a little bit different, you know, you know when you
look around, like we have so much capability at our
fingertips tips today right with your cell phone and especially
now with like chatch ept and lums, but imagine world
twenty five years ago where none of that existed and
you had to do it at old school, right analog
(05:28):
And when you're in these high pressure environments where you
just have to get something done, you turn into a mcguiver.
We just got to figure it out learn on the fly,
and you don't have this reach back support that you
can that you can either have that capability, so a
lot of times you just got to do it yourself.
And and that kind of defined the teams that are
that I was on, you know, a huge proponent of
(05:48):
the you know, Stanling a crystal team of teams. You
have these multidisciplinary teams where they're self forming, everyone's aligned,
everyone's kind of focused on the same you know, problem
set or the same outcome that they're dry tour. How
do you do that as quickly as possible? How do
you measure that? Et cetera. And so you know, in
my time overseas, and you know, I ended up at
(06:09):
c ACI, which is an incredible company, and I worked
with amazing people and it gave me a lot of experiences,
you know, experience for sure, but I love that term
of experiences with the nests because you know, having a
broad set of experiences just gives people more contexts so
they can understand exactly what they're doing and why it matters,
(06:30):
you know, and huge, huge proponent of the network. And
so you know, my first boss ended up at IBM
through some type of merger and acquisition, inviting me to
come over there, and again just had to reset, Okay,
learn the environment, who's who, what do we do, what
our clients expect from us? How can I take something
(06:50):
that we're doing and drive that forward with more impact?
And another one of my mentors, which I'm going to
get to the whole origin story, but another one of
my mentor says that you have to be known like
to trust it, right, so you know, shout out tality
Leonardo and that and I think that was you know,
one of my superpowers. And you don't ask my wife
that because you know the like portion might never be there.
(07:11):
But you know, just you know, people's time is incredibly valuable, right,
that's everyone's like most important asset. But how do you
form those relationships with people? You know, up, down, left, right,
whatever that might be right, could be junior, could be senior.
And again like just pay it forward and then you'll
never have to interview for another job again because someone's
I'm going to ask you to.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Come along on their journey with you as well.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And so so you know, my friend colleague, you know,
he loved to go join, you know, our future CEO
of Avantis, to go start something else. And you know,
I remember they asked me, hey, would you like to come?
I like, no, I'm good, I like IBM right now.
And then you know, a year past and then finally said, hey,
if you don't join, you're gonna miss out. And again
I just I just took. I just said all right, cool,
(07:55):
I left that other airplane, jumped out of that and
you know, parachuted into something else.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
And and you know, so we were.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Off on this other journey. I didn't know about mergers
and acquisition. I didn't know about private equity, but what
I learned was is like you have to you have
to be just steely eyed about what you're solving for.
And we saw a gap in the market and at
that time, there are a lot of mediocrity servicing like
one portion of that national security space, and that was
trying to build you know, better teams, trying to be
(08:25):
more provide more opportunities for team members or employees, et cetera,
which which we did a great job. And and once that,
once we had a glass ceiling, we had to partner
with someone bigger. You know, I found myself just kind
of wandering in the woods figuring out what I wanted
to do next, and I found that that some of
the things we set out to do hadn't been accomplished
(08:46):
fully and there was still more to do. And one
of the things that I'm trying to solve for at
b Core, you know, obviously just provide the most you know,
impactful capabilities to our clients as quickly as possible, which
we'll talk about, but it's also that team member development
and it's not about just career development. It's a mission.
Mobility is like I'd like to say, because again going
(09:07):
back to experiences, if you're a technologist, you want more
use cases, you want more access to new capabilities and
new technologies. You just don't want to be stuck in
one role for your entire career. But you only can
kind of have that mobility if you're a little bit larger,
you know. Again, like you know, we'll talk more a bit.
It's like we're able to partner and acquire these amazing
(09:29):
small businesses that have exquisite capabilities, incredible cultures, just incredible
humans behind the fold, and you don't want to break
that and we're not trying to, but you do want
to offer more investment, so there's more opportunity to you know,
to have and realize those experiences I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
All Right, well, thanks for sharing all that, and I
don't want to bury the lead anymore because we're here
to talk about Bcore and all the incredible work you're doing.
And before we find out exactly what you do, why
don't we start with the mission and the vision Chad,
what are they?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, So I'll start with the mission first. But you
know at Bcore and the beauty of this is like
we're going through a brand refresh right now, we're not
going to change the name. And so you know, we've
we've involved as many people as we could in the
company because we're just over two hundred people. I like
this this idea of this grassroots identity because it's not
(10:23):
you know, vision and mission is not top down. I mean,
sure we're setting the flagpole, but the vibe and the
feel and the spirit of the company is our people.
And so we're just about accelerating this decisive advantage for
war fighters and intelligence professionals, which everyone might say they do,
but we just do it by blending human insight, rapid engineering,
(10:44):
precise metrics, and relentless grit into like just mission ready
solutions and that speed agility that's you know, supporting each
other to do more than we could alone. And the
vision of that is is just like freaking do it
with the best humans possible and just just create this
organism that just lifts everyone up to be their best
(11:04):
I mean support for sure, but also kind, candor all
these other things, because accountability and honesty is also incredibly
important in that journey.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Well, you're talking a lot about leadership and culture that
I'm going to come back to a little bit later,
but I think it's very cool stuff, So why don't
we do this. There's going to be a lot of
our listeners today that are being introduced to b CORE
for the first ever time. And if you were to
give a thirty thousand foot view and tell them, hey,
this is what BCRE does, what would you say?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, I mean we're It goes back to that, like
we're providing those mission focused solutions.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
You know, it's the.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Speed portion, right because our practitioners know these mission sets
and they've lived these mission sets for so long, and
we're experts at technology allows us to do that quicker
than our competitors. And you're only going to do that
if you're partnered, part creative, part artists. And you know,
(11:57):
my job as the coach is just trying to orchestrate
that and to make that more effectively. So all that
being said is, you know, heavy dominant and just enterprise
IT capabilities as a baseline, but also up that stack
of just data engineering, application development, data science, anything AI
related that would automated type of outcome. And then most importantly,
(12:18):
which a lot of people overlook, is like it's cool
to develop a capability, but we also do an incredible
job of being able to tell that story to a
decision maker or a policymaker, an operator, an intelligence professional,
success the end and stack. And we're all nerds and engineers.
So it's just data logic presentation. That's your standard architecture.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
All right. And I know that there's some clients that
you probably cannot talk about and we're very sensitive that,
but can you give us just kind of a rough
view about who you are working with, who the clientele is.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, I mean we primarily support the intelligence community, which
you know, you might know who those core folks are,
as well as d D clients as well. But we're
not zealots about anyone's better than whatever, because again, when
you look into the hood, everyone's providing functional mission sets
and functional capabilities to do that. In my job and
(13:07):
our job is, you know, support to the country is
orchestrating that where people don't have to be siloed in
their individual previous organizations. Because if I can cross pollinate
that expertise in that mission expertise, well that technology expertise,
it's gonna save money, it's gonna save time, it's more effective.
(13:28):
You know, we don't have to build the same thing
three times, you know, And so that's what that's my
challenge in this new journey is for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, Chah, this is a great segue because you've already
alluded to this a couple of times. And I want
to talk about the competition, because everybody, especially in your space,
has competition out there. And with that said, when you're
trying to differentiating yourself, whether you're selling yourself or somebody's
coming to you, how are you saying that we're the
best fit for you. How's it work?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Well, I mean there is a lot of listening, but
you know, our core for principles, right, it's human edge, velocity, precision, impact,
and relentless gret And that's the capability that we can
bring to bear. But again, it's just like it's like
Steve jobs whole concept of you know, starting with the
user and working way back to the technology and our
whole you know, my whole Like remember I'm jumping on
(14:16):
the band where I'm beating the dramas. Just start with
the requirement, start with that end user, start with that
mission user, work your way back to the solution and
be honest, sometimes we can solve it, sometimes we can't.
If we can't solve it, we know who can. And
again like that being an honest broker, where we're not
wasting your time. We're going to give you the best
advice or we're going to build you the best thing.
(14:37):
Like that's where I like to live, you know, as
a company, because you know what we are able to
realize through that is people pull us in because we
solve very very hard problems very quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You know, one of the things I would love to
talk to about because you mentioned that the two hundred
people on your team, and this means that there are
a lot of moving parts, especially with your clientele and
people a working either at a secure site or they
might be in your building, or maybe they're working from home,
so they're everywhere. And you obviously have a voice and
a vision and when it comes to communication about getting
the job done and making sure, of course your team
(15:12):
has a work life balance, because that's a real big
deal for a lot of people today. But making sure
that things get done as a leader, how do you
do that?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
That's I love the question because that's the one thing
that keeps me up at night or when I'm riding
my bike. I'm continuously thinking about there's never like a
mission accomplished banner there because it's always it's always in
motion and you're always kind of fine tuning it. The
beauty of having that multidisciplinary that team of teams approaches
it doesn't have to just be from me. I mean,
(15:40):
if I can offer clarity to my colleagues and they're
able to you know, push that out as well. The
other side is, you know, my phone is always on.
I'm always texting with every person in the company. And
that's what I love about only two hundred people in
this company, like I can have meaningful relationships with as
many people as I can who also are willing and
(16:03):
open to that. Not everyone wants to hear from like
you know, CEO or somebody, right, because there's a visceral
reaction if someone is feeling that. And so you know that,
what I've learned from my mentors is just trust, you know,
transparency and clarity around that around that mission because or
around that communication. Because when you get a poorly written
(16:25):
email or just some you know, vague statement, you know,
your mind can go negative, it can go overly positive,
you know. So that's why we got to do And
then I don't like anecdotes. So that's why I like
this hands on approach with with my folks, and I
always tell a lot of my core folks that are
around me more it's just like, hey, we said this all,
(16:46):
make sure they understand it, and then make sure again
they understand that because that communication piece is so important.
The other side too, that we're trying to figure out
is you know, which is you know, why I'm on
this show is just to spread that message because you know,
we used to have the luxury or maybe it was
kind of just standard of just kind of operating, you know,
below the radar, right, because you don't like to talk
(17:08):
about stuff. But it's twenty twenty five and we're dealing
with some of the most incredible technology. And you know,
in our company is about sixty five percent gen xerorgen Z,
and so I have to meet them of how they're communicating,
how they synthesize information, where there it's writing, where it's
you know, podcasts, vlogs, whatever that might be. I don't
want to be on video, but but you know, that's
(17:29):
what we're trying to We're trying to balance here. And
the last thing I'll mention too is I'm kind of
like this rebellious soul, right, So what we're trying to
do now is like we're not telling people what we're doing,
We're showing them. And so demos are so much more
important just to connect with people. And it's both for
clients and they understand exactly what we do, but it's
also for future team members because you know, they need
(17:50):
to see themselves here building something with us.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
If that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It does, And you know, Chad, I think this goods
back to culture. I'm a big sports guy, and you
don't have to be in a sports team to know
what culture is, the good and the bad and why
it works. It works in your workplace, it works everywhere.
But the kind of vibe I'm getting from you, what
you're talking about with your team is that besides the
acts of kindness, the communication, but the accessibility to you
is paramount. And you're doing some really high level stuff
(18:14):
with your team. So that's why the phone's on all
the time and it's accessible. But it just sounds like
it's ulter important. But I imagine the feedback you get
from the team that this is the way it works
for us. If I can get a hold of the
big boss, make sure that we're all clear on this project.
I'm good to go.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, but I will say because you know, I've acquired
four companies in this run, so obviously be core, you know,
Tyler Laverck and Andy Rackaman.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Sorry that you know.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I use M and A to fill gaps, right, So
I use mergers and acquisitions to build capabilities, to get
new access to new clients, spaces, solve mission. But you've
got to revere these companies. These are young entrepreneurs that
have built amazing companies from scratch. Like they're doing things
I can't do. Like you know, it's easier for me
to go borrow money from my private equity partners than
(19:01):
it is for me to risk my own money upfront, right,
So so you have to revere what they've built. And
you you know, my job is not to change, is
to optimize, is to understand exactly what they're doing and
and drive that forward. And you know, back to that
sports analogy I remember, like watching the All Star Baseball
game and you would see your favorite baseball player could
be like Ryan Sandberg, who is normally on second base,
(19:22):
he might be playing outfitl be like why well for
that configuration of those team members. That's where he should
be because he's going to he's going to offer the
team the most value in that position. And so so
you know when I have these young entrepreneurs that come
into our ecosystem, you know, some of them have different roles,
like because I need them in the business because either
their their mission experts or their culture carriers, or they're
(19:45):
this client whisper, or they're helping you know, level up
other people. Right, and so you know everyone's kind of
playing this thing as well because running a business is hard,
and so so some of these business owners they get
tired of the back office all those other aspects. They
just want to be touching the mission, touching the client
with the people. Right, So I can offload that. And again,
(20:05):
I'm just the coach. I'm not the quarterback. I'm not
the running back.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Well, I didn't like that position, but I correct me
if I'm wrong. There's no rigidity here. It seems like
you're very flexible in a lot of different areas, even
though you still have a mission and a vision for this.
Flexibility is paramount here, right.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, And it's every situation is bespoke, and that's what
I love about humans, it's like, yeah, there's not a
one side fits all approach.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, well, listen, I do want to talk about challenges
in the industry, and people like me who watch the
news and read the news every day, we only have
enough information to be dangerous, Chad, and we obviously only
know the tip of the iceberg of the incredible work
that you're doing with all your clients out there. So
there's that. But with that said, with AI and the
friggin world is on fire right now, and I'm sure
(20:50):
it's just wacky behind the scenes. When it comes to
challenges in the industry, in layman's terms, what are they
right now?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I think that the things that keep me up at night.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You know, obviously the industry is it's shaky, or it's
going through a period of reset, or it's just you know,
I feel like it's stabilizing now because again it's just
government doesn't need to pay for the same thing five times, right,
we all we all can agree upon that, Yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
How do you do that? How do you do that quickly?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
And you know, people might have, you know, opinions about
the acquisition processes all these other aspects, but that's not
my job to judge it. I'm I'm I got to
be a great partner to our clients and just be
able to help them save money and.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Measure that stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So stability within the organization is critical, right, any business
owner will say that stability is key. The rapid pivot
to these new technologies is not new, because you know,
we've been doing this for the past twenty five years.
It's you know, you know, we didn't have an iPhone
up until two thousand and you know whenever that was.
(21:50):
But it is important because now it is coming online
a lot quicker is to help be not the shiny
object seller but the actual like the capability delivery and
the adoption of that. And so in order to do that,
you have to be we have to stay abreast of
new capabilities, we have to know the constraints of these
these enterprises that we're delivering into, and we also have
(22:12):
to have the human capital that can actually do that.
And you know, in our industry there's security clearance requirements,
there's all these other constraints. So that's the balance that
I that the challenge that I see. It's not the
can it be done? No, it's like, can it be
done in a responsible way where you're not over selling
something that you know will fail and but you're still
(22:35):
doing it a speed that you can still be responsible,
but you also need to be agile and adapted as well.
So in the last one on the human capital, we
have so many tools available to make our workforce have
so much more context about everything, which is very exciting.
And so do we have the people leaders in our
(22:56):
organization and to surround these these young practice and help
them on their way is one worry concern, and that's
what we're solving for. But on the other side, you know,
you know, we have sixty five percent Gen Z millennial,
but we also have the other thirty five percent like me,
you know, old Gen X curmudgeons, like are we nimble
(23:16):
and adaptable and can we thrive in other areas? And
so that's that's what we're trying to solve for. But
in our organization, I mean, you have to you have
to have new work, you have to have new projects
that have you know, newer capabilities, so people can kind
of get time in the saddle learning those things. So
that's the kind of current challenges I'm facing is just
(23:38):
stability in the in the organization.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
You know, how do you how do you harness these.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
New capabilities that have to be delivered to these clients,
and then how do you solve that human capital piece?
And human capital is not just a talent attraction. It's
also just talent leveling up or fulfillment in people's roles
in their careers.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, when I talk to athletes in my job,
you know, sometimes I don't get overwhelmed with meeting everybody,
but I try and put myself in their shoes. And
you know, when you're a professional, you know, football or
baseball player, or maybe you're a musician, you're doing a job.
You've been doing it for a long time. So when
somebody is, you know, looking up to you about, oh
my gosh, you're a rock star, oh my gosh, you're
(24:16):
a pro football player, you know, it's that vision that
you have of somebody. And the reason why I bring
up that analogy is that I'm always in awe of
what people like you and your team do, but you're
living it every day. And what I wanted to ask
you was, I realize you don't have a crystal ball chat.
But when it comes to the future and living this,
and you talked about staying up at night. You know,
(24:37):
I imagine you do have sleepless nights for the hard
work that you do with your clients. But you know,
as layman, we watch and read the news and all
that's going on. I think it's easy that a lot
of us are a little nervous or scared about what's
happening out there. As you look forward into your industry
and as you work with your clients, you know, how
do you see the next five ten years going in
the industry. What's happening with the world right now?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Think about when I told you my mom pivot, you know,
the recording is you got estament made the recording industry stop. No,
I mean it's even more incredible now there's more access
to music. Nine to eleven happened in gnarly time. A
lot of my colleagues careers, and you know, and we
overcome and we've created some incredible capabilities that helped the
(25:16):
country move that forward. So in these times of crisis
or these times of uncertainty, there's a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
The game's changing.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
And you know, the old the old Harvard Review article
of like adapt or Die with Kodak or Xerox turning
down the mouse. I mean, that's that's where I that's
where I'm excited because we're in this position, we're seeing
this stuff happen so rapidly. So sure there might be
periods of weakness where I'll doom scroll, but I have
(25:44):
to just kind of, you know, lift my head up
and gain perspective, like, Okay, what can I control? And
that's why I got to focus on you know, the
rest of stuff is out of my control. But I
know what we're great at, and we're great at building
really great teams and understanding the exact problem that needs
to be and having a little bit you know, of
foresight over the horizon to actually solve the next next
(26:05):
And that's that again, that's our sweet spot and our
strikes some well.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
I appreciate you sharing that. I do want to put
a pin in work just for a second, and it
might have to do a little bit with work, But
when it comes to philanthropic charity work, whether it's with
the business or maybe with you and your family, what
do you like to be a part of I love.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
The question too, because I don't like when I was
younger in my career or when I just you know,
started and when I had resources that I could actually give,
I thought that was the goal, right, Okay, cool, this
organization needs some money. But I think now what I
realized is just like time is the greatest asset, and
(26:41):
and so I think my approach to philanthropy and charity
is just it's just this micro impact approach. Okay, what
are my strengths And if I gave someone or something
a little bit of my time, how could I help that?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
You know?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
And so from the business operational side, sure I could
lend some expertise here, but no one needs another boss.
And I think where I find my happy spot today
is just like in this mentorship piece. But you know,
when I meet some of these the children of these
individual these fallen or wounded service members or operators, it's
like they just want time and they want to be heard,
(27:14):
they want to be listened to. And so that's where
I can have the most impact now. Now later when
I don't have like work and all these other aspects. Yeah,
I would love to get more involved where I could
kind of federate that, but you know, I have a
lot of I've done a lot of stupid things in
my life, so I have a lot of lessons learned
we all have and if I share that with people,
(27:35):
it saves them time, right yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
All right, well listen, I appreciate sharing that. Well, let's
do this, Chad. I really enjoyed the conversation, but I
do want to get some final thoughts and recap everything
we do want to give the website and Chad. I
imagine from time to time you're looking for the best
of the best. So if you are hiring, I know
people are listening to the series about that as well
when it comes to BCRE. But maybe there's some final
thoughts about what we talked about. Sir, the floor is
(27:59):
yours now.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
I again thank you for this opportunity because this is
you know, no one thinks of chadcom and sports, so
uh to be to be an interviewed to someone of
your ilk and the folks that you've interviewed, this is
an exciting experience. Again, it's like everyone's talk about their companies,
which is awesome, but again it's the people that we
(28:21):
have in these businesses that make these things thrive.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And I think you know as.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
As your as you're in your career looking for for
an organization to join, I mean you know it's it's
there's two sides to that, right, it's just what what
you're going to provide to them and what we're going
to provide to you. And so if those things are aligned,
then great. Because getting back to the you know, the
the talent attraction, Yes, we are hiring.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Just amazing individuals.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
That that are creative, curious, and just nerdy, which is cool.
And if you go to bcore dot com you can
learn more about us. You know, we're going through brand
refresh that that brand will be relaunched in uh midly.
So we're really excited about that because I think it
crystallizes who we are, what we're doing, what we're trying
to do, and I think people are going to get
(29:07):
really excited about that.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Understanding. Well, chat, I can't tell you how much I
appreciate your valuable time. And I say this a lot
to people that I talk in this series, in this industry,
in the DMV, because there's a lot of really cool people,
a lot of smart people like you and your team
members that while we're sleeping at night, are doing some
incredible things and I know that we're not aware of it,
but I'm just very appreciative, especially living in the DMV.
(29:29):
This is my fourth time living here. I live in
Northwest DC now and I've met enough people in your
industry and in the military that they're just doing incredible
things to keep us safe. And I know there's a
lot to be worried about out there as we watch
the news every night, but we're just very appreciative of
companies like yourself and your teammates about what you're doing
out there for us and trying to protect us and
working with the agencies out there. So thank you so much,
(29:50):
and I'm glad we could feature you on CEOs.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
You should know, I appreciate Dennis, thanks for your time
as well.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Our community partner, M and T Bank supports CEOs, you
should know is part of their own going commitment to
building strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses
within them. As a Bank for communities, M and T
believes in dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local
businesses thrive because when businesses succeed, our communities succeed.
Raft M and T Bank presents CEOs you should know
power by I heard. Let's meet Chad Kim. He is
the CEO of V Corps, headquartered in Reston, Virginia. Vcorp
brings together elite teams of engineers, analysts, and technologists who
rapidly transformed complex challenges into precise, impactful solutions for the
national security community. Before we talk more about Chad's company,
(00:21):
I first asked him to talk a little bit about himself,
where he's from, and his origin story.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I've definitely lived a lot longer outside of where I
grew up. So you know, my father was enlisted in
the army and he was using the GI bill to.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Go to school.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So you know, I was born actually in Fayetteville, North Carolina,
outside of and you know, spent a lot of time
in Mississippians and other places growing up, and ended up
in outside of Nashville, Tennessee, you know, studying music business
and courting industry or audio engineering, which is crazy because
at that time, this is like the late eighties, early nineties,
(00:57):
I mean, you had gruns, you had a lot of art,
you had real world you know, an MTV, and it
kind of it defined kind of my whole being because
it taught me like that this value of like self
identity and authenticity and hard work. And I know that's
kind of you know when you think back to like
nineteen ninety three, you know, you had Kirk Cobaine and
(01:19):
all these other influences, but there was this hard work
aspect to it, because like you know, as you're listening
to those artists, it's like, wow, how did that twenty
five year old get to that level? And then you
start kind of reading and learning about that. There weren't
books or in articles back then. It was like magazine
articles and you would hear their origin stories and so anyways,
(01:40):
like sorry for that tangent, but like but that that
kind of defined just my let's just go, let's just
go do something. So after I graduated, I wanted to
go to law school, and I decided to take a
break before so I went to South Korea taught English
for a year, which definitely was funny because it's probably
like Robin Williams, like, you know, good morning Vietnam. But
(02:00):
I definitely you know, whoever I taught English, they probably
you know, they didn't learn or they're not speaking well
these days. But you know, this was right after nine
to eleven, so that was always top of mind. And
so it's somewhere along that journey when I was there
in South Korea, you met some friends and ended up
supporting the intelligence community and you know, its overseas for
a good portion of that time.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So that's my origin story.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, let's talk about that pivot from from music to
kind of super secret stuff. That's a really big change.
So i'd love to hear, not necessarily the origin of it.
And of course we're going to talk a lot about
Becore in your current company and what you're doing as CEO,
and all the amazing things that are happening right now
in the industry and the kind of world that we're
living in. But talk about that pivot, because I think
in this series we've talked to a lot of people
(02:44):
that won't surprise you, Chad, that have made these amazing
pivots where they've started in this direction and gone just
did a one eighty to whatever they do now, and
so it's not it's not a big surprise to us,
But why the pivot for you?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, I think Mike Tyson famously said, like everyone has
a plan until you get punched in the face, that's right.
And there are a couple of punches, right, Obviously there's
nine to eleven. But even before that you had m
P three's and Napster and all those other services that
you know, pretty much decimated that industry.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Right. So you know, here I here.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I was about to graduate school, you know, and turning
at different record companies and all this other stuff. And
you know, my my mentors or advisors like, hey, you've
better focus on music publishing in transaction, you know, copyright law,
because that's actually where.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
The money is going to be, you know, in this time.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
And and you know I told my parents, I say, hey, look,
I'm gonna go do this over here, like and and
also is this Jack Kerouac in me of just wanting
to kind of see the world and experience the world
on my own terms, not not in the warm you know,
security blanket of my family and this other stuff. So
so so I made that jump. And then you know,
(03:53):
after nine eleven happened, you know, same thing, right, boom,
world's changed.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Okay, what what kind of control? What can I not?
Is there something I can do? Personally?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
You know, because again, when you're young, you have unlimited time,
and you're able to make a little bit riskier decision,
you know, profile than you would leader as an adult,
especially if you have children or family or anything those
other aspects. And so, you know, I think the thing
that characterized me and why I brought up the whole
music and that self identity and the hard work and
all those other aspects is just you got to be agile,
(04:25):
Like just like running water. You know, something comes, you
just go, you just flow around it. And you know,
I think that's kind of defined me, especially my earlier.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
In my career.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Just just roll up your sleeves, get it done, and
learn from it and try to teach others out of
the way.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's a good advice. Once again, it's a story we've
heard many times. So we're obviously here to talk about becore,
and I do want to hear the origin about the
company and such and what you've done so far, and
we'll get into mission and vision and programs, capabilities, all
sorts of different things. But you did a lot before that,
and I know there's some things that you can't talk about,
whether that you have to be vague about, but can
(04:59):
you talk about kind of leading up on all the
things that you did and then becore as it started.
Because I know that's a fascinating story too.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, No, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.
You know, during that time, you know the world was
a little bit different, you know, you know when you
look around, like we have so much capability at our
fingertips tips today right with your cell phone and especially
now with like chatch ept and lums, but imagine world
twenty five years ago where none of that existed and
you had to do it at old school, right analog
(05:28):
And when you're in these high pressure environments where you
just have to get something done, you turn into a mcguiver.
We just got to figure it out learn on the fly,
and you don't have this reach back support that you
can that you can either have that capability, so a
lot of times you just got to do it yourself.
And and that kind of defined the teams that are
that I was on, you know, a huge proponent of
(05:48):
the you know, Stanling a crystal team of teams. You
have these multidisciplinary teams where they're self forming, everyone's aligned,
everyone's kind of focused on the same you know, problem
set or the same outcome that they're dry tour. How
do you do that as quickly as possible? How do
you measure that? Et cetera. And so you know, in
my time overseas, and you know, I ended up at
(06:09):
c ACI, which is an incredible company, and I worked
with amazing people and it gave me a lot of experiences,
you know, experience for sure, but I love that term
of experiences with the nests because you know, having a
broad set of experiences just gives people more contexts so
they can understand exactly what they're doing and why it matters,
(06:30):
you know, and huge, huge proponent of the network. And
so you know, my first boss ended up at IBM
through some type of merger and acquisition, inviting me to
come over there, and again just had to reset, Okay,
learn the environment, who's who, what do we do, what
our clients expect from us? How can I take something
(06:50):
that we're doing and drive that forward with more impact?
And another one of my mentors, which I'm going to
get to the whole origin story, but another one of
my mentor says that you have to be known like
to trust it, right, so you know, shout out tality
Leonardo and that and I think that was you know,
one of my superpowers. And you don't ask my wife
that because you know the like portion might never be there.
(07:11):
But you know, just you know, people's time is incredibly valuable, right,
that's everyone's like most important asset. But how do you
form those relationships with people? You know, up, down, left, right,
whatever that might be right, could be junior, could be senior.
And again like just pay it forward and then you'll
never have to interview for another job again because someone's
I'm going to ask you to.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Come along on their journey with you as well.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And so so you know, my friend colleague, you know,
he loved to go join, you know, our future CEO
of Avantis, to go start something else. And you know,
I remember they asked me, hey, would you like to come?
I like, no, I'm good, I like IBM right now.
And then you know, a year past and then finally said, hey,
if you don't join, you're gonna miss out. And again
I just I just took. I just said all right, cool,
(07:55):
I left that other airplane, jumped out of that and
you know, parachuted into something else.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
And and you know, so we were.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Off on this other journey. I didn't know about mergers
and acquisition. I didn't know about private equity, but what
I learned was is like you have to you have
to be just steely eyed about what you're solving for.
And we saw a gap in the market and at
that time, there are a lot of mediocrity servicing like
one portion of that national security space, and that was
trying to build you know, better teams, trying to be
(08:25):
more provide more opportunities for team members or employees, et cetera,
which which we did a great job. And and once that,
once we had a glass ceiling, we had to partner
with someone bigger. You know, I found myself just kind
of wandering in the woods figuring out what I wanted
to do next, and I found that that some of
the things we set out to do hadn't been accomplished
(08:46):
fully and there was still more to do. And one
of the things that I'm trying to solve for at
b Core, you know, obviously just provide the most you know,
impactful capabilities to our clients as quickly as possible, which
we'll talk about, but it's also that team member development
and it's not about just career development. It's a mission.
Mobility is like I'd like to say, because again going
(09:07):
back to experiences, if you're a technologist, you want more
use cases, you want more access to new capabilities and
new technologies. You just don't want to be stuck in
one role for your entire career. But you only can
kind of have that mobility if you're a little bit larger,
you know. Again, like you know, we'll talk more a bit.
It's like we're able to partner and acquire these amazing
(09:29):
small businesses that have exquisite capabilities, incredible cultures, just incredible
humans behind the fold, and you don't want to break
that and we're not trying to, but you do want
to offer more investment, so there's more opportunity to you know,
to have and realize those experiences I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
All Right, well, thanks for sharing all that, and I
don't want to bury the lead anymore because we're here
to talk about Bcore and all the incredible work you're doing.
And before we find out exactly what you do, why
don't we start with the mission and the vision Chad,
what are they?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, So I'll start with the mission first. But you
know at Bcore and the beauty of this is like
we're going through a brand refresh right now, we're not
going to change the name. And so you know, we've
we've involved as many people as we could in the
company because we're just over two hundred people. I like
this this idea of this grassroots identity because it's not
(10:23):
you know, vision and mission is not top down. I mean,
sure we're setting the flagpole, but the vibe and the
feel and the spirit of the company is our people.
And so we're just about accelerating this decisive advantage for
war fighters and intelligence professionals, which everyone might say they do,
but we just do it by blending human insight, rapid engineering,
(10:44):
precise metrics, and relentless grit into like just mission ready
solutions and that speed agility that's you know, supporting each
other to do more than we could alone. And the
vision of that is is just like freaking do it
with the best humans possible and just just create this
organism that just lifts everyone up to be their best
(11:04):
I mean support for sure, but also kind, candor all
these other things, because accountability and honesty is also incredibly
important in that journey.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Well, you're talking a lot about leadership and culture that
I'm going to come back to a little bit later,
but I think it's very cool stuff, So why don't
we do this. There's going to be a lot of
our listeners today that are being introduced to b CORE
for the first ever time. And if you were to
give a thirty thousand foot view and tell them, hey,
this is what BCRE does, what would you say?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, I mean we're It goes back to that, like
we're providing those mission focused solutions.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
You know, it's the.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Speed portion, right because our practitioners know these mission sets
and they've lived these mission sets for so long, and
we're experts at technology allows us to do that quicker
than our competitors. And you're only going to do that
if you're partnered, part creative, part artists. And you know,
(11:57):
my job as the coach is just trying to orchestrate
that and to make that more effectively. So all that
being said is, you know, heavy dominant and just enterprise
IT capabilities as a baseline, but also up that stack
of just data engineering, application development, data science, anything AI
related that would automated type of outcome. And then most importantly,
(12:18):
which a lot of people overlook, is like it's cool
to develop a capability, but we also do an incredible
job of being able to tell that story to a
decision maker or a policymaker, an operator, an intelligence professional,
success the end and stack. And we're all nerds and engineers.
So it's just data logic presentation. That's your standard architecture.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
All right. And I know that there's some clients that
you probably cannot talk about and we're very sensitive that,
but can you give us just kind of a rough
view about who you are working with, who the clientele is.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, I mean we primarily support the intelligence community, which
you know, you might know who those core folks are,
as well as d D clients as well. But we're
not zealots about anyone's better than whatever, because again, when
you look into the hood, everyone's providing functional mission sets
and functional capabilities to do that. In my job and
(13:07):
our job is, you know, support to the country is
orchestrating that where people don't have to be siloed in
their individual previous organizations. Because if I can cross pollinate
that expertise in that mission expertise, well that technology expertise,
it's gonna save money, it's gonna save time, it's more effective.
(13:28):
You know, we don't have to build the same thing
three times, you know, And so that's what that's my
challenge in this new journey is for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, Chah, this is a great segue because you've already
alluded to this a couple of times. And I want
to talk about the competition, because everybody, especially in your space,
has competition out there. And with that said, when you're
trying to differentiating yourself, whether you're selling yourself or somebody's
coming to you, how are you saying that we're the
best fit for you. How's it work?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Well, I mean there is a lot of listening, but
you know, our core for principles, right, it's human edge, velocity, precision, impact,
and relentless gret And that's the capability that we can
bring to bear. But again, it's just like it's like
Steve jobs whole concept of you know, starting with the
user and working way back to the technology and our
whole you know, my whole Like remember I'm jumping on
(14:16):
the band where I'm beating the dramas. Just start with
the requirement, start with that end user, start with that
mission user, work your way back to the solution and
be honest, sometimes we can solve it, sometimes we can't.
If we can't solve it, we know who can. And
again like that being an honest broker, where we're not
wasting your time. We're going to give you the best
advice or we're going to build you the best thing.
(14:37):
Like that's where I like to live, you know, as
a company, because you know what we are able to
realize through that is people pull us in because we
solve very very hard problems very quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You know, one of the things I would love to
talk to about because you mentioned that the two hundred
people on your team, and this means that there are
a lot of moving parts, especially with your clientele and
people a working either at a secure site or they
might be in your building, or maybe they're working from home,
so they're everywhere. And you obviously have a voice and
a vision and when it comes to communication about getting
the job done and making sure, of course your team
(15:12):
has a work life balance, because that's a real big
deal for a lot of people today. But making sure
that things get done as a leader, how do you
do that?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
That's I love the question because that's the one thing
that keeps me up at night or when I'm riding
my bike. I'm continuously thinking about there's never like a
mission accomplished banner there because it's always it's always in
motion and you're always kind of fine tuning it. The
beauty of having that multidisciplinary that team of teams approaches
it doesn't have to just be from me. I mean,
(15:40):
if I can offer clarity to my colleagues and they're
able to you know, push that out as well. The
other side is, you know, my phone is always on.
I'm always texting with every person in the company. And
that's what I love about only two hundred people in
this company, like I can have meaningful relationships with as
many people as I can who also are willing and
(16:03):
open to that. Not everyone wants to hear from like
you know, CEO or somebody, right, because there's a visceral
reaction if someone is feeling that. And so you know that,
what I've learned from my mentors is just trust, you know,
transparency and clarity around that around that mission because or
around that communication. Because when you get a poorly written
(16:25):
email or just some you know, vague statement, you know,
your mind can go negative, it can go overly positive,
you know. So that's why we got to do And
then I don't like anecdotes. So that's why I like
this hands on approach with with my folks, and I
always tell a lot of my core folks that are
around me more it's just like, hey, we said this all,
(16:46):
make sure they understand it, and then make sure again
they understand that because that communication piece is so important.
The other side too, that we're trying to figure out
is you know, which is you know, why I'm on
this show is just to spread that message because you know,
we used to have the luxury or maybe it was
kind of just standard of just kind of operating, you know,
below the radar, right, because you don't like to talk
(17:08):
about stuff. But it's twenty twenty five and we're dealing
with some of the most incredible technology. And you know,
in our company is about sixty five percent gen xerorgen Z,
and so I have to meet them of how they're communicating,
how they synthesize information, where there it's writing, where it's
you know, podcasts, vlogs, whatever that might be. I don't
want to be on video, but but you know, that's
(17:29):
what we're trying to We're trying to balance here. And
the last thing I'll mention too is I'm kind of
like this rebellious soul, right, So what we're trying to
do now is like we're not telling people what we're doing,
We're showing them. And so demos are so much more
important just to connect with people. And it's both for
clients and they understand exactly what we do, but it's
also for future team members because you know, they need
(17:50):
to see themselves here building something with us.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
If that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It does, And you know, Chad, I think this goods
back to culture. I'm a big sports guy, and you
don't have to be in a sports team to know
what culture is, the good and the bad and why
it works. It works in your workplace, it works everywhere.
But the kind of vibe I'm getting from you, what
you're talking about with your team is that besides the
acts of kindness, the communication, but the accessibility to you
is paramount. And you're doing some really high level stuff
(18:14):
with your team. So that's why the phone's on all
the time and it's accessible. But it just sounds like
it's ulter important. But I imagine the feedback you get
from the team that this is the way it works
for us. If I can get a hold of the
big boss, make sure that we're all clear on this project.
I'm good to go.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, but I will say because you know, I've acquired
four companies in this run, so obviously be core, you know,
Tyler Laverck and Andy Rackaman.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Sorry that you know.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I use M and A to fill gaps, right, So
I use mergers and acquisitions to build capabilities, to get
new access to new clients, spaces, solve mission. But you've
got to revere these companies. These are young entrepreneurs that
have built amazing companies from scratch. Like they're doing things
I can't do. Like you know, it's easier for me
to go borrow money from my private equity partners than
(19:01):
it is for me to risk my own money upfront, right,
So so you have to revere what they've built. And
you you know, my job is not to change, is
to optimize, is to understand exactly what they're doing and
and drive that forward. And you know, back to that
sports analogy I remember, like watching the All Star Baseball
game and you would see your favorite baseball player could
be like Ryan Sandberg, who is normally on second base,
(19:22):
he might be playing outfitl be like why well for
that configuration of those team members. That's where he should
be because he's going to he's going to offer the
team the most value in that position. And so so
you know when I have these young entrepreneurs that come
into our ecosystem, you know, some of them have different roles,
like because I need them in the business because either
their their mission experts or their culture carriers, or they're
(19:45):
this client whisper, or they're helping you know, level up
other people. Right, and so you know everyone's kind of
playing this thing as well because running a business is hard,
and so so some of these business owners they get
tired of the back office all those other aspects. They
just want to be touching the mission, touching the client
with the people. Right, So I can offload that. And again,
(20:05):
I'm just the coach. I'm not the quarterback. I'm not
the running back.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Well, I didn't like that position, but I correct me
if I'm wrong. There's no rigidity here. It seems like
you're very flexible in a lot of different areas, even
though you still have a mission and a vision for this.
Flexibility is paramount here, right.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, And it's every situation is bespoke, and that's what
I love about humans, it's like, yeah, there's not a
one side fits all approach.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, well, listen, I do want to talk about challenges
in the industry, and people like me who watch the
news and read the news every day, we only have
enough information to be dangerous, Chad, and we obviously only
know the tip of the iceberg of the incredible work
that you're doing with all your clients out there. So
there's that. But with that said, with AI and the
friggin world is on fire right now, and I'm sure
(20:50):
it's just wacky behind the scenes. When it comes to
challenges in the industry, in layman's terms, what are they
right now?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I think that the things that keep me up at night.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You know, obviously the industry is it's shaky, or it's
going through a period of reset, or it's just you know,
I feel like it's stabilizing now because again it's just
government doesn't need to pay for the same thing five times, right,
we all we all can agree upon that, Yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
How do you do that? How do you do that quickly?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
And you know, people might have, you know, opinions about
the acquisition processes all these other aspects, but that's not
my job to judge it. I'm I'm I got to
be a great partner to our clients and just be
able to help them save money and.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Measure that stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So stability within the organization is critical, right, any business
owner will say that stability is key. The rapid pivot
to these new technologies is not new, because you know,
we've been doing this for the past twenty five years.
It's you know, you know, we didn't have an iPhone
up until two thousand and you know whenever that was.
(21:50):
But it is important because now it is coming online
a lot quicker is to help be not the shiny
object seller but the actual like the capability delivery and
the adoption of that. And so in order to do that,
you have to be we have to stay abreast of
new capabilities, we have to know the constraints of these
these enterprises that we're delivering into, and we also have
(22:12):
to have the human capital that can actually do that.
And you know, in our industry there's security clearance requirements,
there's all these other constraints. So that's the balance that
I that the challenge that I see. It's not the
can it be done? No, it's like, can it be
done in a responsible way where you're not over selling
something that you know will fail and but you're still
(22:35):
doing it a speed that you can still be responsible,
but you also need to be agile and adapted as well.
So in the last one on the human capital, we
have so many tools available to make our workforce have
so much more context about everything, which is very exciting.
And so do we have the people leaders in our
(22:56):
organization and to surround these these young practice and help
them on their way is one worry concern, and that's
what we're solving for. But on the other side, you know,
you know, we have sixty five percent Gen Z millennial,
but we also have the other thirty five percent like me,
you know, old Gen X curmudgeons, like are we nimble
(23:16):
and adaptable and can we thrive in other areas? And
so that's that's what we're trying to solve for. But
in our organization, I mean, you have to you have
to have new work, you have to have new projects
that have you know, newer capabilities, so people can kind
of get time in the saddle learning those things. So
that's the kind of current challenges I'm facing is just
(23:38):
stability in the in the organization.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
You know, how do you how do you harness these.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
New capabilities that have to be delivered to these clients,
and then how do you solve that human capital piece?
And human capital is not just a talent attraction. It's
also just talent leveling up or fulfillment in people's roles
in their careers.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, when I talk to athletes in my job,
you know, sometimes I don't get overwhelmed with meeting everybody,
but I try and put myself in their shoes. And
you know, when you're a professional, you know, football or
baseball player, or maybe you're a musician, you're doing a job.
You've been doing it for a long time. So when
somebody is, you know, looking up to you about, oh
my gosh, you're a rock star, oh my gosh, you're
(24:16):
a pro football player, you know, it's that vision that
you have of somebody. And the reason why I bring
up that analogy is that I'm always in awe of
what people like you and your team do, but you're
living it every day. And what I wanted to ask
you was, I realize you don't have a crystal ball chat.
But when it comes to the future and living this,
and you talked about staying up at night. You know,
(24:37):
I imagine you do have sleepless nights for the hard
work that you do with your clients. But you know,
as layman, we watch and read the news and all
that's going on. I think it's easy that a lot
of us are a little nervous or scared about what's
happening out there. As you look forward into your industry
and as you work with your clients, you know, how
do you see the next five ten years going in
the industry. What's happening with the world right now?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Think about when I told you my mom pivot, you know,
the recording is you got estament made the recording industry stop. No,
I mean it's even more incredible now there's more access
to music. Nine to eleven happened in gnarly time. A
lot of my colleagues careers, and you know, and we
overcome and we've created some incredible capabilities that helped the
(25:16):
country move that forward. So in these times of crisis
or these times of uncertainty, there's a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
The game's changing.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
And you know, the old the old Harvard Review article
of like adapt or Die with Kodak or Xerox turning
down the mouse. I mean, that's that's where I that's
where I'm excited because we're in this position, we're seeing
this stuff happen so rapidly. So sure there might be
periods of weakness where I'll doom scroll, but I have
(25:44):
to just kind of, you know, lift my head up
and gain perspective, like, Okay, what can I control? And
that's why I got to focus on you know, the
rest of stuff is out of my control. But I
know what we're great at, and we're great at building
really great teams and understanding the exact problem that needs
to be and having a little bit you know, of
foresight over the horizon to actually solve the next next
(26:05):
And that's that again, that's our sweet spot and our
strikes some well.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
I appreciate you sharing that. I do want to put
a pin in work just for a second, and it
might have to do a little bit with work, But
when it comes to philanthropic charity work, whether it's with
the business or maybe with you and your family, what
do you like to be a part of I love.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
The question too, because I don't like when I was
younger in my career or when I just you know,
started and when I had resources that I could actually give,
I thought that was the goal, right, Okay, cool, this
organization needs some money. But I think now what I
realized is just like time is the greatest asset, and
(26:41):
and so I think my approach to philanthropy and charity
is just it's just this micro impact approach. Okay, what
are my strengths And if I gave someone or something
a little bit of my time, how could I help that?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
You know?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
And so from the business operational side, sure I could
lend some expertise here, but no one needs another boss.
And I think where I find my happy spot today
is just like in this mentorship piece. But you know,
when I meet some of these the children of these
individual these fallen or wounded service members or operators, it's
like they just want time and they want to be heard,
(27:14):
they want to be listened to. And so that's where
I can have the most impact now. Now later when
I don't have like work and all these other aspects. Yeah,
I would love to get more involved where I could
kind of federate that, but you know, I have a
lot of I've done a lot of stupid things in
my life, so I have a lot of lessons learned
we all have and if I share that with people,
(27:35):
it saves them time, right yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
All right, well listen, I appreciate sharing that. Well, let's
do this, Chad. I really enjoyed the conversation, but I
do want to get some final thoughts and recap everything
we do want to give the website and Chad. I
imagine from time to time you're looking for the best
of the best. So if you are hiring, I know
people are listening to the series about that as well
when it comes to BCRE. But maybe there's some final
thoughts about what we talked about. Sir, the floor is
(27:59):
yours now.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
I again thank you for this opportunity because this is
you know, no one thinks of chadcom and sports, so
uh to be to be an interviewed to someone of
your ilk and the folks that you've interviewed, this is
an exciting experience. Again, it's like everyone's talk about their companies,
which is awesome, but again it's the people that we
(28:21):
have in these businesses that make these things thrive.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And I think you know as.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
As your as you're in your career looking for for
an organization to join, I mean you know it's it's
there's two sides to that, right, it's just what what
you're going to provide to them and what we're going
to provide to you. And so if those things are aligned,
then great. Because getting back to the you know, the
the talent attraction, Yes, we are hiring.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Just amazing individuals.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
That that are creative, curious, and just nerdy, which is cool.
And if you go to bcore dot com you can
learn more about us. You know, we're going through brand
refresh that that brand will be relaunched in uh midly.
So we're really excited about that because I think it
crystallizes who we are, what we're doing, what we're trying
to do, and I think people are going to get
(29:07):
really excited about that.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Understanding. Well, chat, I can't tell you how much I
appreciate your valuable time. And I say this a lot
to people that I talk in this series, in this industry,
in the DMV, because there's a lot of really cool people,
a lot of smart people like you and your team
members that while we're sleeping at night, are doing some
incredible things and I know that we're not aware of it,
but I'm just very appreciative, especially living in the DMV.
(29:29):
This is my fourth time living here. I live in
Northwest DC now and I've met enough people in your
industry and in the military that they're just doing incredible
things to keep us safe. And I know there's a
lot to be worried about out there as we watch
the news every night, but we're just very appreciative of
companies like yourself and your teammates about what you're doing
out there for us and trying to protect us and
working with the agencies out there. So thank you so much,
(29:50):
and I'm glad we could feature you on CEOs.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
You should know, I appreciate Dennis, thanks for your time
as well.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Our community partner, M and T Bank supports CEOs, you
should know is part of their own going commitment to
building strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses
within them. As a Bank for communities, M and T
believes in dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local
businesses thrive because when businesses succeed, our communities succeed.
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