Charles Lyons-Burt
Executive Mosaic is pleased to award QinetiQ U.S. President and CEO Shawn Purvis with the 2023 Wash100. This recognition is given only to the finest and most promising executives in the government contracting field and U.S. federal government, whose proven abilities in leadership, innovation and vision have impressed the award’s discerning voting body. Wash100 inductees are seen as sure bets to usher America into a new era of capability mastery and, often, fortified defense systems.
Purvis certainly excels in both of the latter categories and earned placement in this year’s esteemed group of winners through her persistent technology leadership of the North American arm of the UK-based aerospace, defense and research and development contracting corporation. 2022 saw Purvis oversee major acquisition deals, lead the company to attain important contracts and assist in emboldening presence in its targeted market areas.
2023 is Purvis’ third consecutive year of inclusion in the Wash100 (as well as the 10th year of the honor’s storied lifespan). She is an established 25-year-plus veteran of the GovCon space, having spent nearly 13 years at SAIC, 10 years at Northrop Grumman and held additional positions at Lockheed Martin. She arrived at QinetiQ US from Northrop in February 2022, kicking off a landmark year in her career.
“Shawn has inherited an opportunity of significant magnitude and has maintained the growth of QinetiQ since arriving, remolding the organization to better match industry opportunities. We think the best is yet to come,” commented Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award.
Purvis noted that her aim in taking up the CEO and President positions was to “build a disruptive mid-tier company in the U.S. through both organic growth and strategy-led acquisitions.” She said she is equally committed to both bolstering operations and carrying out a successful medium- and long-term growth strategy.
In August 2022, QinetiQ agreed to acquire Avantus Federal, a company specializing in cyber and data analytics, for a reported sum of $590 million. The deal is expected to strengthen QinetiQ’s ability to serve its Department of Defense and intelligence community customers and Purvis foresaw it resulting in “a powerful performance culture and scaled technical differentiation.”
That same month, the company landed a four-year, $48 million contract from the U.S. Army to perform research, development and engineering services for the service branch’s C5ISR Center Research and Technology Integration Directorate’s Image Processing Division. Activities under the contract will serve image processing and advanced optics technology objectives.
“We are focused on providing mission-led engineering to protect our servicemen and women while advancing operational goals, and are proud to work with the Army on its R&D and imaging efforts,” remarked Purvis.
Both the Avantus buy and the Army contract are in line with the strategic pursuits that Purvis outlined in her September 2022 video interview with EM’s Summer Myatt. During the conversation, Purvis enumerated QinetiQ’s four primary concentrations as: ISR systems; cyber and information advantage; robotics and autonomous systems; and engineering and innovation.
Purvis also explained to Myatt how the company is evolving its approach from the PED (or processing, exploitation and dissemination) model of defense technology creation to a full-scale embrace of Joint All Domain Command and Control. Under the JADC2 framework, communications systems are united across environments and vantage points to achieve an interlocking, complex yet accessible network of tools.
“Orchestrating how we will collect and process data at the edge will be a force multiplier for the global defense landscape and QinetiQ will be one of the companies leading that charge,” Purvis said.
Executive Mosaic could not agree more and highly anticipates where this new CEO will take her company in the year ahead. The team at EM commends Purvis for her 2023 Wash100 win and her accomplishments over the last year.
As part of the extensive Wash100 rollout over the next several months, a popular vote contest is held from January to April to determine the readers’ favorite 30 executives from the roster. Every participant receives 10 votes to cast, so head over to Wash100.com now to join in the fun.
