Amentum completed its $1.9 billion all-cash acquisition of PAE in February 2022, and John Heller, who previously served as PAE CEO, became the head of the combined enterprise.
Executive Mosaic spoke with Heller, a seven-time Wash100 Award winner, in an exclusive video interview to get an inside look at the company one year later.
Vote for John Heller as your favorite 2023 Wash100 Award winner at Wash100.com!
“When I came on board, I set five priorities to start with, just to give everyone clarity, understand what I was trying to accomplish and give the entire team some focus,” Heller said in a conversation with Executive Mosaic’s Summer Myatt.
The areas of growth, leadership, team building, synergies and enterprise transformation make up Heller’s leadership strategy, which he said “gave us the confidence to put a vision in place for the business that was bold, that really leaned forward.”
“Having a vision for Amentum of creating a safer, smarter and cleaner world really reflects who Amentum is today and where we’re going in the future,” he explained.
Heller shared that he views the company as “Amentum 2.0” as it emerges from a period of rapid transformation and embarks on a new era of growth in the government contracting market.
“The company went through major transformation over the last three years, and really in two and a half years doubled in size — approximately 45,000 employees operating around the world in over 75 countries. That’s significant change that took place,” Heller noted.
As part of these major changes, Amentum organized around three core growth areas: engineering, science and technology; national security; and critical missions — the company has seen success in these areas recently through major contract awards.
In February, Amentum landed a $487 million contract with the U.S. Army to provide engineering, modernization and sustainment services for the branch at facilities outside of the continental U.S. In the same month, the company won a $4.6 billion contract with the Air Force to help manage the service’s information technology and procurement processes in support of foreign military sales customers.
Watch Heller’s full video interview here to get an inside look at Amentum’s future, and don’t forget to subscribe to Executive Mosaic’s YouTube channel.
