Summer Myatt
Executive Mosaic is pleased to induct Jen Sovada, president of global public sector at SandboxAQ and chair of Executive Mosaic’s 4×24 Quantum Group, into the ranks of the 2024 Wash100. Sovada won her first Wash100 Award this year for her leadership and expertise in the emerging quantum field and for her work helping government customers understand and harness the power of quantum.
Jen Sovada is a contestant in GovCon’s most exciting race, the Wash100 popular vote competition! Cast your votes for Sovada and other GovCon leaders at Wash100.com.
The Wash100 Award is the government contracting industry’s most prestigious accolade, given to the top 100 changemakers and influential leaders working in the federal government and the government contracting ecosystem each year. Candidates are carefully considered and selected based on their demonstration of leadership, vision, innovation, achievement and reliability.
“Quantum has the potential to become the world’s next super power. Jen’s leadership in the rapidly evolving quantum and AI fields is helping to drive advancements and adoption within the federal landscape,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award.
“Jen wins her first Wash100 Award this year not only because of her past accomplishments in the cyber and intelligence fields with the U.S. Air Force, but also because of her promising trajectory at the forefront of quantum innovation and education,” Garrettson added.
Sovada shared her insights into the quantum revolution during an exclusive video interview with Executive Mosaic in September 2023. She identified three main categories of use cases for quantum within the federal government: quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum communications.
“Within applications for the U.S. government, there are things like quantum navigation or precision, navigation and timing, which we can use atomic clocks — which are quantum-inspired devices and quantum devices — as well as quantum sensors that enable us to navigate without GPS in GPS denied and degraded environments,” she said in conversation with Executive Mosaic’s Summer Myatt.
In her two years thus far as the head of SandboxAQ’s global public sector business, Sovada has been instrumental in helping the Software-as-a-Service company expand its reach at the intersection of quantum and artificial intelligence.
Most recently in January, SandboxAQ acquired Good Chemistry, a computational chemistry company.
“The acquisition of Good Chemistry enhances SandboxAQ’s domain expertise, technologies and capabilities in the rapidly evolving field of AI Simulation by accelerating our impact on the physical world with advanced materials science applications such as designing better batteries or lighter, stronger metal alloys as well as drug discovery,” commented Sovada on the transaction.
Also in January, SandboxAQ announced its partnership with Carahsoft for the distribution of its cryptography management, simulation and optimization and quantum sensing offerings to government customers via Carahsoft’s contracts and resellers.
SandboxAQ became a founding member of a coalition focused on increasing the awareness and adoption of post-quantum cryptography, or PQC, in September 2023. Other founding members of the PQC Coalition include IBM Quantum, Microsoft, MITRE, PQShield and the University of Waterloo.
“As a charter coalition member, SandboxAQ will leverage its deep public- and private-sector connections to create broader issue awareness, drive development and implementation of PQC solutions, and help streamline the process for organizations to migrate to PQC,” Sovada said.
Also in the post-quantum cryptography arena, SandboxAQ booked an other transaction agreement with the Defense Information Systems Agency in June 2023 to develop a cryptographic technology prototype that can protect against quantum computing threats.
Last fall SandboxAQ also launched a new Quantum Technologies training course, in partnership with FedLearn, designed to educate those involved in defense and intelligence missions with a strong understanding of quantum fundamentals. Sovada noted that the course brings SandboxAQ’s expertise in quantum to “individuals across national security disciplines to help prepare them for success in the coming quantum era.”
Executive Mosaic congratulates Jen Sovada and SandboxAQ on their inclusion in this year’s Wash100 list.
