Transcript:
AW: Before there were 3, there was just me.
With an extensive background in Special Forces operations, I retired out of SOCOM after 20 years of service. In 2009, I got my start as a defense contractor just like our team today deploying to regions such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and various places in Europe before I found Quiet Professionals. I founded the company in 2013 and by the end of that year we had just three employees and a mission to strengthen America’s Global Security.
MR: Today, just 7 years later, we have grown to 130 employees globally and we continue to expand our mission support capabilities. This astonishing growth has been made possible by our purpose driven and innovative teams, our committed industry partners and our proven performance across multiple high value contract awards. Keeping up with all of this growth is no small task, we have outgrown our space time and time again, and our identity as a company has evolved.
KG: So while we may have been quiet these last few months, we have been hard at work. We created a new collaborative high-tech space for our teams on the 5th floor. We took a hard look at our culture and identity, and we developed a new digital presence to really capture the innovative and purposeful nature of our teams.
LK: We strengthened industry partnerships with companies like ESRI and Azure, and we are quickly becoming the preferred partner for assisting DOD agencies through cloud deployment where our geospatial and cloud service professionals can integrate cognitive services, big data analytics, and automation with deep learning.
MH: We also expanded our full spectrum IT services and products, providing analytical unmanned aerial system consulting support and intelligence support to numerous U.S. government organizations and Special Operations Forces. All this in addition to continuing the ground efforts to counter and defeat Improvised Explosive Devices in the most dangerous areas in the world.
AW: We have been excited to share this growth with you, and we had hoped to invite you for some QP hospitality but in these unprecedented times, we are grateful for the technology to meet you virtually.
Welcome to Quiet Professionals!
AW: Hi. My name is Andrew Wilson. I am the president and CEO of Quiet Professionals. Thank you all for joining us today for a behind-the-scenes chat with our executive team. We are so proud of the work that our family of Quiet Professionals has accomplished and the growth of the business to date, and we promise you this is just the beginning. Starting the company I would definitely be remiss if I didn’t mention my wife Cindy Wilson. So the great thing about Cindy is she has a lot of experience in business before I even got out of the military and understood what business was. Cindy’s been an instrumental part with all the businesses that I’ve started, with her background and insurance having her own State Farm Insurance Agency, she brought a lot of experience to the table especially for Quiet Professionals. From contracts to insurance to management of personnel, she’s continued to help us all the way through today as the Chief of Staff of this company and all the while running her State Farm Agency. Truly incredible. I love her very much and she is certainly the rock from where I come.
You know back when I founded Quiet Professionals in 2013, I was coming from the background of an enlisted guy who didn’t have a lot of money. To get started I had to self fund the company and at the time the only way to do that and make payroll for the other employees was to actually deploy as an armed contractor myself, which I did for the first two years. During that time I was working as an advisor for JIEDDO also known as The Joint IED Defeat Organization and at the time Mike register, who is now our Chief Operating Officer was the program manager, because of this I deeply understand the stresses and sacrifices involved in contract work and the difficulties that come with any deployment. So it was critically important to me as a business owner that the administrative overhead QPers working back here at headquarters in sunny Florida maintained a good appreciation surrounding all the hardships and difficulties that our deployed contractors deal with on a constant basis, while they perform their complex jobs in very austere locations.
I think that’s a big part of what really makes us successful. We come from where our employees come from, we understand what they have to deal with and we are here to support them and their families to the best of our abilities. Since the beginning, I believe another important part of our success has come from focusing on a responsible growth. You have to be careful to ensure that you can meet and or exceed customer expectations and that you never sell something that you’re unable to fulfill. We are looking for QP to continue with that growth and to shift into the big business category.
Strategically we’ve been discussing as an executive team the kinds of companies that we might target for acquisition as we continue to approach that big business designation. We’re also expanding into new areas like cloud architecture, geospatial solutions and other key pieces within the IT realm that we know are growing in the government space. That’s why we’re excited to be partnering with companies like Esri who dominate the geospatial market on a global scale and Microsoft with their DOD compliant and continuously evolving Azure platform. As many of you know QP was recently awarded a large IDIQ contract seat with USSOCOM on their core services support platform that totals 950 million over the next 10 years. We are excited that SOCOM continues to put their trust and confidence in us as a company. We’ve also won a few other recent large IDIQ contracts that will make us even more competitive. Look for us to start winning additional task orders and hiring for even more positions right here in the Tampa Bay area and abroad. We will continue to enjoy our partnerships with many of you out there and we sincerely hope you will join us in person to learn more about our future direction once this international pandemic and national unrest begins to subside. Thank you all very much for taking the time to join us today.
LK: I am Leo Kryszewski. I am the Executive Vice President of Quiet Professionals. I’m in charge of all new business. I met Andy overseas in 2014, we were both working on the JIEDDO Joint Expeditionary Team contract which our current Chief Operating Officer actually was the program manager of. My talks with Andy overseas was very inspiring, out of the blue we fast forward to 2015 and I received a call from Andy and he told me that he wanted me to come work for him and that I had to move from Tennessee to Florida in 4 days. He also caveated that he could put me on this contract but he can only guarantee me one year salary. Most people would have said no. I packed my bags and I became employee number 7. You know 2016-2017, we started getting more sub-contracts and larger companies were seeing all the good work we did and with that we landed a couple prime contracts. The next couple years 2018-2019, we really started booming. We were getting more Prime contracts which was our focus and larger pinpointed subcontracts. And then 2020 hit, this is just a precursor to what the next 3 to 5 years will bring and how we will expand. It’s going to be very exciting to see the future.
KG: My name is Kishima Garcia. I am the Executive Vice President of Human Capital and Strategies here at Quiet Professionals. I’ve been with the company almost 5 years. When I joined the company in 2015, there were only 26 people, 6 overhead and 20 billable.
We have employees located all over the world. My commitment to QP is to ensure that all of our employees regardless of their position or location feel welcome to the team, even when they’re coming through our doors for the first time. Being a Quiet Professional employee is not like being an employee anywhere else. Our culture is one to be experienced, it’s a vibe or feeling of warmness and familiarity. It feels like home. Looking to the future with our forecasted growth, we challenge ourselves to ensure it always feels like home.
MR: Hello, my name is Michael Register and I am the Chief Operating Officer for Quiet Professionals. I joined QP in August of 2019 and I could not be more honored to be part of such a great team of professionals. Upon my arrival to QP, I quickly found that the vision of the company exceeded my expectations and I believe that I am not only part of a family here but I’m involved with a company that has tremendous opportunity and growth potential, while helping to make America more secure.
MH: My name is Mike Horowitz, I am the Chief Financial Officer for Quiet Professionals. I came aboard Quiet Professionals in April 2020 right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel that our company was in a very strong position to handle the challenges that we have all been facing. At this time, we are poised to launch out of this uncertain time and pursue all of the opportunities to support the many important missions ahead.
