In late 2023, our team at Element 84 implemented an internal “business unit” structure within our project teams to loosely group client work based on industry and focus area. From the inception of this organizational change, Mark Reese took on the “Federal” business unit and continues to manage our portfolio with US federal agency clients. Although these units have remained fluid over time, we continue to maintain the business unit structure to shape our organizational approach. In this blog, we sit down with Mark to discuss his personal connection to his work, and how he sees E84’s work in the federal space continuing to evolve.
Getting to know Mark Reese: Director, Federal
In the following sections, we’ve transcribed our conversation with Mark about our work with the Federal Government.
Can you share a brief overview of your professional background? How did you end up at Element 84?
MARK: Coming into Element 84 was a bit of a career change for me; I switched fields altogether. I don’t come from a computer science or technical background – before this, I worked with churches implementing church management software and change management. So, before starting at Element 84, I had a lot of experience with change management and customer interactions.
Once I got to Element 84, I came in as a Front-End Engineer; a UI/UX designer. I spent about six months doing that, but I was identified pretty early on as someone who could talk with customers, understand what they wanted, communicate those needs back to the team, and then get people to say, “Yes, this is done.”
At that point, I transitioned into team leadership roles, then into team-of-teams leadership, and later into program leadership. This was all on the client-facing side until about 2019, when Scott [Caltagirone] moved up to COO, and I started running the PMO (Project Management Organization).
When Element 84 acquired Azavea, the Project Management Organization became a full-time thing for me because our project size doubled. Eventually, this led me to apply for the Federal BUD [Business Unit Director] role.
Throughout this process, my experience running the Project Management Organization and my understanding of how to create, develop, and nurture client relationships shaped my approach to the way the Federal Unit operates now.
As a Business Unit Director, there is no clear path to success; I have to make my own path. For example, we have been exploring work in the defense and intelligence space. That is not a straight path; it is very windy and undefined. I think the same personality traits that allowed me to find my way into Element 84 are very similar to the personality traits that allow me to find a solution to these undefined problems.
I hope that mentality flows down to my project managers and team leads and shapes a team mentality focused on finding success through adversity.
What makes Element 84 unique as a company?
MARK: There are a lot of great companies out there; a lot of great places to work, and a lot of places with very smart people. So I don’t know if it’s necessarily what makes us unique, but what makes us special is our people.
Dan and Tracey, the founders and owners, have such a genuine heart for our people, and that shows up in the benefits that we get working here. Beyond handwritten benefits, if life happens, Dan and Tracey understand, and they want to navigate that with you to the degree that you want them to.
That culture permeates down to the team level. We’ve got people who have gone through very significant life events, and they felt supported at this company. Not just by the Company, but by the individual people who are here.
And that’s just the personal side! Certainly, we have talent in spades here. Seeing the people at E84 doing what they do best every single day, it’s hard to say “Oh, I want to go work somewhere else,” because it’s hard to imagine where else you would find this.
How does the support you receive here show up in your project work?
MARK: It is really nice being at a small company that allows us the opportunity to influence those above us; it’s fairly flat. If there’s someone that I really want to keep on our team but they’re hoping to grow in the company, we look to write a job description and try to create a new role. There is an appetite to keep our people here.
We used to say this back in the day, but the goal is for everyone to retire from Element 84. It’s a very lofty, impossible goal, but the heart of it is that we want this to be a place that everyone wants to stay and for that to be something we can support. Both from a compensation standpoint and a work variety standpoint, to stay engaged. The kind of people that are here don’t want to be doing the same thing 20 years from now, so we have to adapt.
How do we engage with federal projects?
MARK: The phrase I use on every teaming or business development call is, “Element 84 is not a ‘butts-in-seats’ contractor.” We are not the company that you call when you’ve got to fill a hundred seats to do task-level things.
People at Element 84 want to engage and to really understand vision, mission, intent, and the ‘why’ behind the systems that are in place. Why is it designed this way? And they want to help inform that perspective as well.
A lot of our business with federal agencies is as subcontractors, and this mentality is what our prime contractors and our indirect clients, civil servants, have come to expect from Element 84. If we are not doing that, then we are not doing the specific job that we were brought in to do. Element 84 engineers, designers, and project managers strive to fully understand the full scope and goals of the systems we work on and critically think through every detail down to the individual ticket level. If they are handed a ticket and something in that ticket doesn’t align with the vision and goals for the project, we are going to throw a flag on it and discuss (better yet, lead) a path forward for the benefit of our customers and their users. The people that we hire are genuinely curious, and they want the best solutions.
The value that we bring far outweighs the individual seats on a contract that we are taking up.
What do we do in the federal unit to maintain that expectation?
MARK: I really think it starts at our hiring process. I don’t think these standards are unique to the Federal Business Unit; I think the same personality exists across the organization. It’s easy for me to maintain these expectations when I’m rotating someone in from another project because this is the expectation of anyone at Element 84.
Our hiring process illustrates this pretty well because it includes the tech screening process and the project presentation. Part of that is you have to defend your design, your implementation, and your decisions to a panel of very technical people. So we practice what we preach and lean into engaging with prospective employees to work to understand their solution before we say, “Yep, this is great.” And that’s exactly what we expect from our team on a project!
On a project, we’re not just going to take the requirements and say “Sir, yes, sir!” and move on – we are going to really make sure that we understand and agree with what is happening. Maximum effort leads to maximum benefit from our people.
Also, we really try not to put an individual new hire on a project on an island. We want them surrounded by or at least exposed to other people from Element 84 so that they can see these standards lived out every day.
What kinds of people and organizations are most successful in government contracting?
MARK: Ownership. Our people take ownership. When we are on a project we own that it needs to get done, and demonstrate that we are going to own it until it’s done and make sure it happens. No one is going to own this thing for you, and this can only remain true if everyone is modeling it with each other. People who are aligned with this expectation are the people that are successful.
What types of projects in your unit make you most excited?
MARK: The things that always get me excited are the things that engage the eight-year-old version of Mark that was fascinated by NASA. As I would watch the space shuttle launch in my backyard, the things that would make eight-year-old Mark say, “I can’t believe you’re doing that now.” Those are the things that it’s genuinely a pleasure that we get to do. And it’s not even just with NASA. NASA is the very obvious one, but we are involved with the Roman Space Telescope and AI at NASA, and those are the things that I get excited about now.
What is next for the Federal unit?
MARK: I am really excited about bringing the scale of our geospatial expertise into a diverse set of clients. I have been focused on thinking through how our geospatial expertise relates to the intelligence community. We’re starting to create those relationships and develop some key partnerships. We just went to GEOINT, and I’m looking forward to engaging with the small business community within the intelligence community to offer complementary capabilities. We want to engage with small businesses that have capabilities that are complementary to ours, so that we can work together to build real solutions.
Learning more about E84’s Federal Unit
Our work with Federal contracts continues to evolve, and we look forward to continuing to evolve our work in this area. To get in touch with Mark and our Federal team, reach out to us directly on our contact us page, and stay tuned for updates on our project work in the federal space.
