Ireland Degges
Charles O’Brien currently serves as vice president of SOSi’s Civil Solutions arm. In this role, he leads an international team delivering human-centric, technology-enabled solutions and operational capabilities in support of humanitarian operations and assistance, disaster response and emergency management to state and federal agencies, including the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. He joined the company over eight years ago as an operations manager and later served as director of language services and programs before ascending to his current role in December 2021.
O’Brien’s private sector career is informed by 25 years of service in the U.S. Army, during which he held multiple leadership roles focused on strategy, financial management and more for various Army units. He moved to industry in early 2015, and before SOSi, he was a program manager and strategic management consultant at Alliance Pointe.
In a recent Executive Spotlight interview with ExecutiveBiz, O’Brien discussed SOSi’s top market priorities and shared his insights on the ways in which the company’s culture contributes to its success. Read the full interview below.
ExecutiveBiz: Tell us about SOSi’s culture. What aspects of the company do you think are contributing most to its success while helping to attract and retain top-level talent?
Charles O’Brien: SOSi’s culture centers around embracing and living up to our “Challenge Accepted” motto. Leaders across the organization prioritize fostering an environment that empowers and inspires every employee to be confident, creative and tenacious in their pursuit of excellence no matter how hard the job might be.
SOSi takes on large-scale, complex and impactful work that other companies might shy away from, focusing on achieving optimal outcomes for our government customers and the populations they serve. Every person on the Civil Solutions team understands that our work directly affects the lives of many vulnerable communities. We take pride in what we do and approach it with a sense of duty, care and dedication that permeates our company’s culture.
ExecutiveBiz: In your opinion, what makes SOSi a place where the best and brightest want to work?
O’Brien: SOSi’s broad capabilities portfolio, diverse customer base and global footprint provide a range of exciting and impactful opportunities that attract top talent. SOSi’s status as a privately held company allows for agility and autonomy in responding to market changes, meeting customer needs and driving projects forward, which provides employees with a greater sense of ownership, stability and impact.
As a service integrator, SOSi understands that our success hinges on our people. We invest heavily in employee development and provide clear paths for career advancement to position individuals and the company for growth and innovation. Many of our leaders, including myself, started in tactical positions and have risen through the ranks. This culture of opportunity and upward mobility draws in highly skilled individuals.
ExecutiveBiz: Where are you seeing opportunities for expansion in SOSi’s portfolio? As the company works to achieve its 10-year vision, are you looking to develop a deeper set of capabilities in your current fields or focus on pursuing opportunities in new markets?
O’Brien: I see many opportunities to continue to provide more comprehensive, technology-enabled support to the agencies SOSi already works with within the Civil Solutions portfolio, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Justice. Building on our diverse experience and service offerings, we can assemble and deliver full-scale, mission-enabling operational capabilities rather than single application solutions for individual pain points. This will allow us to eliminate redundancy, improve cost efficiency through scaling and speed up service delivery so government agencies can deliver better outcomes to constituents relying on their critical services through quality, timely and effective immigration processing, humanitarian and emergency response operations and healthcare services.
Examples of our core capabilities include case and customer relationship management, call center and telephony services, workflow and robotic process automation, backend database solutions and data visualization. By strategically combining these foundational elements, we can develop innovative operational capabilities, such as a contact center that utilizes multimedia and multi-channel approaches, extending beyond traditional telephone-based call centers. To support this innovation, we implemented strategic measures to bolster our talent networks, enhance our services and optimize the flexibility and utilization of our workforce by investing in technology and human capital development.
As we help our customers realize successes by incorporating innovative, technology-enabled approaches, SOSi will continue augmenting services and solutions with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to empower federal, state and local agencies to better meet the diverse needs of the people they serve, especially vulnerable populations with language access, trauma-informed and culturally sensitive requirements.
ExecutiveBiz: How do you set your priorities around limited capture dollars? What goes into the decision-making process of what contracts you want to go after?
O’Brien: SOSi has built long-standing partnerships with government agencies over the years. Our customers know us and our capabilities, and often approach us seeking our expertise and support.
SOSi’s leaders and subject matter experts actively scan the market for contracts that align with our competencies, collaborate with cross-functional teams to assess capabilities and deliver innovative, effective, tailored solutions that differentiate us from our competitors. Our practice area leads also serve as thought leaders, educating both the industry and our customers on emerging trends, best practices and potential challenges.
