Jamie Bennet
Kevin Kelly, chairman and CEO of defense services provider Arcfield, has been deemed as one of the 100 most outstanding leaders in the government contracting sector in 2024 by Executive Mosaic. He joins the 42 first-time inductees into the Wash100 Award, which recognizes public and private officials who have made extraordinary contributions to uplift U.S. federal procurement.
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“In the past year, Kevin has spearheaded significant growth for Arcfield, both through the company’s acquisitions of Strategic Technology Consulting and Orion Space Solutions, and through securing major high-value contracts with government customers. In his two and a half years leading Arcfield, Kevin has managed an expert executive leadership team, fostered a culture of innovation and led the company toward a new era of growth. We’re thrilled to welcome Kevin to the Wash100 Class of 2024,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award.
Kelly has been in the industry since 1993. He began his career at Lockheed Martin as senior systems engineer, working for four years at the company before taking the same position at Lucent Technologies, now part of Nokia.
In 2002, he was appointed as director of technology at General Dynamics’ advanced information systems division, which was combined with the organization’s C4 systems business to form General Dynamics Mission Systems. He was later elevated to division director of technology at GD.
Kelly spent most of his professional life at LGS Innovations, initially as chief operating officer and eventually CEO between 1998 and 2019. LGS is currently a subsidiary of CACI International.
In 2019, CACI made Kelly president of its national security and innovative solutions business. Apart from his full-time role, he also served on the board of directors of adaptive domain name system developer BlueCat Networks.
Arcfield was created in 2021 as a result of Peraton’s divestiture of its systems engineering, integration and services operations. Kelly was chosen as the first CEO of the newly independent company, which is financially backed by private equity firm Veritas Capital.
“Mission, people, business – that is the order of our priorities,” Kelly said during an interview. “The first part of our strategy is to maintain this base of business…These are prized contracts that the predecessor company fought very hard to win and keep, and the key part of our strategy is to make sure we are continually adding value to those missions and that we never forsake anything that we’re entrusted with from a mission perspective.”
Executive Mosaic took notice of Kelly’s contributions through Arcfield’s milestones in the last 12 months. The Chantilly, Virginia-based company posted over $158 million in booked contracts in the first fiscal quarter of 2023 alone. The awards ranged from space and ground equipment support, systems integration and engineering services and mission applications projects for unnamed government agencies.
In August, the space launch and support provider purchased Strategic Technology Consulting in order to gain access to its digital engineering modeling methodologies as well as digital twin and software products.
Kelly led the completion of Arcfield’s acquisition of Colorado-based Orion Space Solutions, boosting Arcfield’s capabilities in end-to-end space exploration as well as hypersonic detection and tracking.
“Arcfield has a long history of delivering innovative solutions across the space domain, and we believe the acquisition of Orion enhances Arcfield’s ability to provide next-generation space technologies in support of [Department of Defense] and [intelligence community] missions,” he remarked.
It is an honor for Executive Mosaic to welcome promising organizations and leaders to its network of federal procurement movers and shakers. We congratulate Kevin Kelly, chairman and CEO of Arcfield, on being inducted into the Wash100 league, and anticipate continued growth and transformation for the company under his stewardship.
