William McCormick
Richard Campos, senior vice president of business development of Altamira, recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz about his accomplishments during his first year with the company as well as the core values of the company’s culture and recent growth initiatives to push Altamira into new markets during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
You can read the full interview with Richard Campos below:
ExecutveBiz: Since joining Altamira back in August, what can you tell us about assuming the role as well as the impact you’ve made in your first year with the company? What were the attributes of its mission that attracted you to the role and what do you hope to accomplish?
Richard Campos: “One of the key things that attracted me to Altamira is the size of the company. We’re not a small business. We’re midsized, which is a great thing because it allows us to scale as needed from a technology, talent or even a resource perspective. It makes our organization agile enough to make our decisions quickly across the board.
If we need to call our CEO or set up an impromptu leadership meeting, we can do it very quickly, especially if it has a real impact on our people or customers. That’s something that can make a significant difference on the mission side as well as from a growth and execution perspective.
I love our agility at Altamira because if we need to redirect our development or realign specific aspects of our resources in real-time, we can do that without a lot of red tape that the larger companies in our space do, which is especially critical given the influence of emerging technology.
Over the last year, I’ve gained a lot of appreciation for how those processes differentiate a company like Altamira and how that could be pivotal to our growth because customers in the federal sector tend to favor the more agile and responsive organizations to their needs and overall mission.
Another factor in our success is ensuring that there’s an open line of communication and trust with our customers. That’s a significant aspect because you need to understand their environment, anticipate changes, and provide thought leadership to support them through that journey.
When you’re a trusted partner and have a proven track record, no one will be surprised if you say there needs to be change and why. That’s also important for the timing because these changes happen and it’s critical to react accordingly as quickly as you can.
When you build strong relationships, you can implement changes and attain that agility that works for your organization, your customers and assists in understanding the nature of our industry and how it’s always changing. We’re on the same team. Our success is our customers’ success. That has worked well for me in the past to drive the best possible mission outcomes.”
ExecutiveBiz: What can you tell us about recent growth initiatives for Altamira and how you’re driving value for your customers across the federal sector? Any new markets that you’re keeping an eye on in the federal sector?
Richard Campos: “At Altamira, we like the domains that we are in – space and cyber. We are proud of our technical capabilities in full stack software development, analytics, data science and visualization. We like the missions we currently support.
Going forward, we would like to grow to the left and right of where our current missions begin and end. In addition to this organic growth, we are looking at potential niche inorganic growth to round out our portfolio.
Altamira is developing a campaign that values accountability for growth and goes a step beyond just business development goals. We wanted to ensure that everyone across our company, including our data analysts, software engineers, program and project managers, all understand their roles and importance to how Altamira needs to grow, especially from an organic growth point of view.
We also want to make sure that people recognize the importance to listen to our customers and pay particular attention to any concerns for their missions. A lot of our folks are on the frontline with our clients to listen and provide first-hand knowledge, in some cases as the operators themselves.
It’s pivotal for those closest to the missions to understand their role in recognizing growth opportunities and how to communicate that back up the chain. As a result, we can develop the solution sets, based on their particular experience, that meet our customers’ needs head-on.
The greater collective goal is to really push Altamira forward and showcase that every individual at our company shares responsibility for our growth. It’s a team effort and that has created a company culture that we’ve seen come to fruition.”
ExecutiveBiz: What are the core values that are important to your company culture at Altamira as well as the challenges involved with talent recruitment and retention in the federal landscape?
Richard Campos: “Our company culture begins and ends with the mission. At Altamira, we take our tagline seriously: Mission. Innovation. Delivered.
Our solutions start with deep mission understanding. That will enable us to expand beyond our current footprint to better support our current customers, as well as bring new capabilities and thought leadership to new customers.
The absolute most important aspect is communication. Even if you have a very simple solution at play, you still need to ensure that everyone understands the solution and what it’s doing for our customers.
Obviously, there are a number of team collaboration tools and products in the market, especially after the events of the pandemic, about how to address those types of challenges within the workforce.
More importantly, it is critical for each individual to feel like a part of the Altamira growth team, and communication is key for every aspect of that. We engage frequently with our employees so they understand their jobs, the Customer expectations, where they fit in the growth strategy, and importantly, we understand their individual career goals.
Hybrid work environments are here to stay and a lot of people may or may not be at home or in the office. That’s just the new norm. The only way to overcome some of those obstacles is to have deep, frequent communication to ensure that everyone in the organization is on the same page.
As a result of the pandemic and changing work environments, we have all seen people stand back and take stock of what they want to do going forward. What is admirable about Altamira’s workforce is how close we are to our customer’s mission. Our team views our customer’s missions as their own.
We take pride in the capability we bring to the mission and the outcomes this provides to our customers. Knowing the difference our team makes to national security motivates us and certainly helps us engage a top-notch technical workforce.
Altamira focuses on ensuring that our workforce sees their time working missions as a fulfilling facet of their entire work-life experience. In addition, we provide an outstanding benefit package and routinely review them to ensure we are competitive – often a little better than peers – for a more complete work-life experience.
Engagement is very important because everyone wants to feel that their work matters, and they can see a direct connection to our customers and missions. For Altamira, we are all about customer missions. We want everyone to understand how their work is meaningful for our customers and serves the greater good of our great nation.”
