Here we are again, gathered to inspect and react to the week’s changes in the 2023 Wash100 popular vote standings. The Wash100 Award, for those who aren’t familiar, is Executive Mosaic’s yearly prize handed to the 100 most distinguished government officials, industry titans, technologists and more who all circle the government contracting sector. These leaders knocked us out with their ambition and accomplishments last year and EM has the utmost confidence they will deliver impactful results in the year ahead.
Once the winners are announced every January, a popular vote contest is held until the end of April to weigh the top 30 fan-favorite honorees, crowning one final winner when it’s all said and done. This year, fierce competition has pervaded the race and no executive has held onto a clear victory for too long before another mightily unseats them.
Cast 10 allotted votes for your most cherished GovCon executives today at Wash100.com. Who knows, your votes could be the deciding factor in an awardee’s grand rise to federal sector fame and notoriety.
Delivering on our warning to watch out for the quickly ascendant John Heneghan, after entering the list in the top 10 a week ago, the ECS president maneuvered his way closer to the top five with a bump from number seven to number six. Don’t be surprised if he cracks the top five next week.
Or maybe he won’t, since the public sector had the strongest showing in terms of the movers and shakers this past week. Stacey Dixon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, made a steady gain from number 20 to number 16. Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, made inroads toward the top 20 with a slide upward from number 25 to number 21 and Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, broke through to the top 25, gaining three spots from last week’s position at number 28. Something was in the water in Washington this week — there were more, albeit incremental, gains by other federal employees that I’m not even mentioning!
However, all of the government officials’ progress didn’t stop Shawn Purvis, CEO of the U.S. arm of QinetiQ, who made a respectable climb from number 15 to number 10 during the last week. Four-time Wash100 awardee Bill Rowan of Splunk also crept toward the top 10, stopping just short at number 11.
The top five — Carahsoft’s Craig Abod, Microsoft Federal’s Rick Wagner and Wes Anderson, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Google Public Sector’s Karen Dahut, respectively — held onto their positions throughout the week, rallying their fanbases enough to maintain their positions.
Join us next week, same time and place, for your next voting update. Manifest the changes you’d like to see come to fruition by participating and voting at Wash100.com now!
