William McCormick
Dan Corbett, CEO of Valiant Integrated Services, spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding how the company is establishing significant partnerships to drive its growth in new markets as well as how its workforce is being driven for long-term success in the highly competitive federal market during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
You can read the full interview with Dan Corbett below.
ExecutiveBiz: How does Valiant Integrated Services ensure long-term success for your workforce to drive value for your employees as you continue to face the uphill challenge to recruit and retain the best talent in the federal marketplace?
Dan Corbett: “Retaining and recruiting talent has become exceptionally challenging over the past few years, primarily due to the specialization of our solutions, which requires employees with particular skill sets, backgrounds, and clearance levels.
At Valiant, we’re constantly rolling out initiatives and programs to improve the lives of our people in areas such as DE&I, enhancing benefits, peer-to-peer and leadership recognition, continuous learning through Valiant University, and much more.
Having those things in place enables your people to focus on what’s truly important: empowering our customers’ missions. We’re fortunate to have 5,000 people, more than 25% of whom consist of veterans, who are intensely focused on mission delivery.
The diversity of the solutions we offer also helps keep turnover low, as it provides nearly endless opportunities for our people. We’re one of the top language services providers for the Department of Defense now and one of the leading providers of Operations and Maintenance solutions to the Defense Health Agency.
We train soldiers from all over the world at the Joint Readiness Training Center and train pilots and maintenance personnel on F-16 and F-18 fighter jets. Earlier this year, one of our employees was recognized for leading and coordinating efforts to overcome human trafficking.
This is just a fraction of the incredible work we do, and by giving our people such a vast number of missions that they can support, we’ve been very fortunate to be less impacted than many in our industry by the Great Resignation while continuing to recruit the talent that will help us empower the missions of tomorrow.”
ExecutiveBiz: What can you tell us about Valiant’s recent growth initiatives? What do you hope to accomplish and any new markets that you’re keeping an eye on in the federal sector?
Dan Corbett: “We’ve had an incredible track record of success over the year, winning well over $1 billion in recompeted and new work, and we want to continue this string of success. We’re focused on our two core markets, broadly defined as Training & Readiness and Mission Support, and those are the areas where we plan to continue to grow.
One area of intense focus for us over the next 18-24 months is the intelligence sector. Thus far, we’ve been a niche player in this space, and while we have a great foundation in the intelligence market, we’ve never gone all-in. Recently, we created an independent Intelligence & Analysis business line that will enable us to refine and refocus our efforts on this market.
We’re in a unique position because we’re leaner and more agile than some of the larger players in the industry. Still, we have capabilities and breadth that many smaller companies can’t match, providing us with advantages that are differentiators in the markets we operate, including intel.
Finally, we’re also always looking at strategic, selective acquisitions of companies or assets to expand our capabilities or fill in gaps, which is something we have extensive experience with, having successfully completed five acquisitions over the past five years.”
ExecutiveBiz: How have recent partnerships been able to assist your company to expand its position in the federal marketplace, drive innovation and new capabilities and ultimately help complete Valiant’s mission?
Dan Corbett: “We’ve been doing a lot of work in this area recently, including on several partnerships we plan to announce very soon. The defense industry is so vast that it’s impossible to have experience and capabilities in every area, and partnerships are one of the best ways for us to grow.
We’re now working on several agreements with companies with complementary capabilities; we can learn from them, and hopefully, they can learn a thing or two from us.
This helps us provide the best possible solutions for our customers by delivering excellence through innovation that would be impossible without partnerships.”
ExecutiveBiz: An important part of a company having strong business ethics in the federal sector is about helping and giving back to the greater community. Can you speak to the various charities and work with other organizations that your company does to make a difference and how people can get involved?
Dan Corbett: “Valiant has an impressive track record of giving back, including supporting hurricane relief efforts in Louisiana; supporting scholarship programs; providing donations to various veterans-related and other charities; supporting tornado relief efforts in Kentucky and Tennessee; donating to support humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine; and, most recently, supporting Hurricane Ian relief efforts.
This year, we launched the Valiant Foundation, a private foundation focused on supporting veterans and their families, as well as humanitarian and disaster relief efforts.
Through the Foundation, we plan to support organizations that provide veterans and their families with educational resources, post-service workforce training, scholarships, and other support services for those wounded or killed in action.
We will also support organizations providing disaster and humanitarian relief to those impacted by natural disasters or terrorist or military activities.
Later this month, we’re very excited to host our first fundraiser for the foundation, the Valiant Charity Golf Classic, which will be held at Lansdowne. This is our first step in raising money to support the Foundation, enabling us to do even more to support these deserving causes.”
