BEST PRACTICES FOR SUCCESS


Some of the brightest minds in STEM, business and government offer their insights and advice about living and working to one’s best potential.


The Next Level THIS PARTNERSHIP IS TAKING 1 SOURCE CONSULTING TO #1


In 2005, 1 Source Consulting, a company owned by William R. Teel, Jr., landed a $1.2 billion information technology service contract, in full open competition. It was one of the larg- est contracts ever awarded to a small business regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender. At the time, 1 Source Consulting had 80 employees. The year before, Teel and his mentor and friend, Rodney Hunt, had established Energy Enterprises Solutions (ESS), on paper, to bid for the seven-year contract to deliver full life-cycle IT services and support to the U.S. Department of Energy. EES is a business joint ven- ture formed by an SBA-approved 8(a) mentor-protégé agreement between 1 Source Consulting, Inc. and RHRT Holdings, Inc. Teel owns 51 percent owner of ESS. The other 49 percent, which is RHRT Holdings, Inc., is owned by Hunt. He was the founder and CEO of RS Information Systems Inc. (RSIS), and his major client was the Department of Energy. In 2007, Hunt sold RSIS, with annual revenues of $350 million, to Wyle, a Southern Cali- fornia aerospace engineering company.


From desktops to satellites Today, EES is in the fourth of its seven-year DOE contract. Teel has also landed prime contracts on Department of Homeland Security’s EAGLE Small Business (FC1, FC2 Tier 1, and FC4) and the General Service Administration Alliant Small Business. The Washington, D.C. company has clients in 10 states, and 1,100 employees support the DoE contract. They provide performance- based support in IT Infrastructure and Network Operations, IT Management, Information Assurance, and Systems Development and Engineering. Teel says his companies “provide infrastructure network services, software


42 USBE&IT I WINTER 2010


development, help desk assistance and cyber security. We are involved from the desktop com- puter to the network to the satellite com- munications. We can give mission support from architecture to green computing to developing alterna- tive grids for IT infrastructure. If it is a support service function and is it based upon informa- tion technology and business we do it,” he says.


became interested in starting his own company, prodded by wanting to see just what he could do to control his own destiny.


But before he William R. Teel, Jr.


made the leap, Teel created the golden combination of degrees. He added a master’s in business administration from the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School to his STEM master’s degree. He told USBE&IT that, “the


248 percent growth In 2010, Inc. magazine ranked 1 Source Consulting as No. 1,198 on its fourth annual “Inc. 5,000” list, with a three-year sales growth rate of 248 percent. This year, Teel projects annual revenue of up to $240 million, or $36 million more than in 2009. The native of Washington, D.C.’s


gritty Anacostia neighborhood made his first connection to the federal government in his early 20s. After graduating in 1990, from what was then Bowie State College, with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a minor in informa- tion management he found his first job. He became a computer programmer at the Department of Energy. That introduc- tion spurred him to earn a Bowie State master’s degree in information manage- ment in 1993.


In a 2007 interview with USBE&IT,


Teel expressed how that step affected him. With the advanced degree, he was invited to the management side of IT at the department. And that’s when he


work in information technology and the first master’s degree gave me an insight as to what technology could do. But when you have a technical person talk- ing to a business manager they speak a foreign language to each other. I wanted to make sure I could speak to people at all levels.”


Opening his own firm It took guts to leave the DoE. Teel says he had a good-paying job, and he had to listen to the naysayers who doubted his chances. “I went from a stable environment to chaos and had to grow and develop character. There were so many fears to be harnessed,” he says. By 1999, Teel was ready. He had been recently promoted at DoE and knew he had to stay or leave. He opened his own firm, 1 Source Consulting, and landed a $10,000 contract from his former agency, the Energy Department. Two years later, after learning that there was a tremendous difference between reading a business case study and making an actual business succeed, Teel knew he


www.blackengineer.com by Frank McCoy fmccoy@ccgmag.com


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