Baird Managing Director John Song Receives First Wash100 Award for Government Services Investment Advisory Leadership

Executive Mosaic, the leading provider in connecting, promoting and branding government and government contracting (GovCon) executives of consequence, is delighted to announce that John Song, managing director of Baird, has received the first Wash100 Award of his career.

Song has been recognized as a first time winner of the most esteemed award in all of GovCon for his efforts to drive exponential growth for the federal marketplace by advising some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions of 2020 and contributing to the significant advancement of our technological capabilities across the GovCon and federal sectors heading into 2021.

“It’s no coincidence that John Song, managing director of Baird, can be found at or near the center of many of GovCon’s most prominent and visible deals,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award. “John possesses extraordinary energy, an extensive network of key relationships and the ability to make the big deals happen.”

Most notably, Baird served as the exclusive financial advisor for Jacobs’ acquisition of The Buffalo Group in Nov. 2020 to expand government mission support across the cyber, ground, sea, airborne and space domains for the former.

Jean Stack, managing director of Baird and a previous Wash100 Award recipient, told GovCon Wire that The Buffalo Group has been winning large-scale contracts in a competitive environment through the application of intelligence analysis to its software development process.

Most recently, Baird served as the exclusive financial advisor for Bridges, a portfolio company of The Acacia Group, as it was acquired by Applied Insight on Feb. 17th, 2021 to advance the latter’s capabilities in network security, cloud engineering, data science, cross-domain solutions and application development.

Baird noted that Applied Insight’s acquisition of Bridges has highlighted buyer priorities in Government and Defense mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The acquisition has also illustrated the stronger focus on cybersecurity and data analytics.

In fact, John Song discussed the strategic decisions that federal companies are making in the current market in cyber and other emerging technologies during an Executive Spotlight with ExecutiveBiz and Jean Stack.

“From an M&A perspective, buyers are absolutely looking for those very high speed, technologically oriented businesses that are able to solve these very complicated and hard problems, Song explained during the Executive Spotlight. You can read the full Spotlight with John Song and Jean Stack on ExecutiveBiz.

In Dec. 2020, Baird also served as the financial advisor for ProModel Government Services as the agreement was reached for NuWave Solutions to acquire the company to help federal agencies to ensure their processes are more efficient and their resources are better managed. Shortly afterward, BigBear was acquired by NuWave Solutions in Dec. 2020 to utilize BigBear’s data and analytics solutions to bolster NuWave’s existing capabilities to address the entire spectrum of information superiority.

1901 Group, a leading provider for managed IT services and cloud solutions in the private and public market, was acquired by Leidos to expand its cloud, IT services and digital modernization capabilities. Baird served as the financial advisor for the 1901 Group during the acquisition.

“1901 demonstrates how innovative companies can explore and demonstrate success in new market areas, like managed services, and create a compelling strategic market position and garner the interest from larger businesses,” said Song.

During his recent Executive Spotlight, John Song also touched on the potential goals and future plans for Baird heading into 2021 and a post-COVID world. Song emphasized that chemistry and connection of people is what the GovCon and federal workforce will be searching for moving forward.

“We’re going to refocus, in terms of our practice and improving our processes, on humanizing our processes so that you’re connecting people much more directly, not necessarily having a virtual communication, to allow for interpersonal interactions between buyer and seller,” Song explained.

Executive Mosaic congratulates Baird and John Song on receiving the most prestigious award in GovCon for the first time. His leadership and vision continues to have a significant positive impact on the progression and growth of the GovCon and federal sectors.

About Wash100

This year represents the eighth annual Wash100 award selection. The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential leaders in the GovCon sector.

These leaders demonstrate skills in leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement, and vision. Visitors to Wash100.com can sign in and vote for the executives they believe will have the greatest impact on government contracting in the coming year.

The media team at Executive Mosaic writes individualized articles for each recipient of the Wash100 award, providing a write up on the executive centered around their career history and highlights.