Jean-Francois (Boodi) Blanc, partner and chief strategy officer for SDV International, recently spoke with GovCon Wire regarding his motivations for joining the company back in March as well as his strategic goals for the rest of 2022 and beyond.
In addition, Blanc also discussed the core values of SDV International’s company culture and a breakdown of his experiences and success driving the federal civilian sector forward over his three decades of work across the federal sector during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
“SDV International is expanding our team of IT professionals dedicated to serving our clients within the Federal Government. Our growth engine and passion are in system and application modernization to include low-code/no-code automation as well as more traditional software development and COTS integration. I’m able to roll up my sleeves more than ever and enjoy the work – we are having fun.”
You can read the full Executive Spotlight interview with Boodi Blanc below:
GovCon Wire: Congrats on recently joining SDV International in March! Why did you want to join the company and what were the attributes of its mission that attracted you to the role? What do you hope to accomplish with the company?
Boodi Blanc: “I was blessed to have been part of several large, outstanding corporations, but had followed SDV International since its inception. The opportunity presented itself to rapidly build upon something great by leveraging our existing capabilities to expand into new markets and technology.
Though we support many Federal agencies, SDV International primarily serves the Defense Health IT sector, and I don’t believe there is a better place to support the warfighter. Our mission is to help ensure the DoD’s Health IT programs and services are more affordable, efficient, and accessible. That mission also scales and translates across other sectors of Government, so we are looking to diversify.
Our mission is straightforward to understand but not easy to execute. There is always a change management aspect that is never done. I believe I bring certain logical and common-sense attributes to the table that will help us drive our mission and expand our footprint.
SDV International has already done a wonderful job creating trust within our clients, so that combined with our strong technical and management skills makes a great recipe for growth and success.
My plan is to continue to strategically diversify into other DoD and Fed Civ markets, to include both small business and full and open opportunities – both as a prime and as a value-added teaming partner. Interestingly, the majority of our work is on full and open contracts.
We pride ourselves on being agile and flexible in terms of adapting to the needs of our clients, which is essential. We can make decisions rapidly and turn resources on or off as the client needs. From what I’ve seen thus far, our customers find that very valuable. We want to expand that model and leverage it with other agencies.
With over a decade of IT optimization experience, we are targeting other defense and federal civilian agencies that we believe will benefit from our capabilities.
We provide project management and full-stack development, modernization, and maintenance. Our agility and flexibility with application modernization and migration to the cloud is an absolute requirement in order to dynamically address our clients’ needs.”
GovCon Wire: What are the core values that are important to your company’s culture? How has your team developed its workflow and ability to drive success in such a competitive market?
Boodi Blanc: “SDV stands for ‘Solutions, Dedication and Values.’ To me, that boils down to service to our country. One of the many things that attract people to our company is our close-knit culture and commitment to our people.
People trust us to do what we say we will do. It’s also exciting, of course, to work in the high-end technology areas. While we have valued technology partners, we are technology-agnostic, which allows us to prove out exciting new products and solutions. Our people find the work to be very rewarding and my job is to ensure their success.
As we expand into emerging technology and new markets, our culture provides support to our people and our customers. This goes back to the founding mission our company and our core values that are rooted in serving our warfighters. This is the mission that gives our team determination and a sense of urgency.
We are about what we can do to make life easier for our clients. We understand that it’s about them, not us. The ability to provide our customers with what they need in real-time can make a huge difference. That’s what makes us who we are.”
GovCon Wire: What can you tell us about the company’s recent growth initiatives and how you’re driving value for your customers through contract awards, acquisitions and other aspects across the federal sector?
Boodi Blanc: “I had the honor to be a civil servant for the first 6 years of my career. I was then able to continue serving the DoD and their Federal Civilian counterparts for the next 24 years. That experience has given me insight into the lives of our clients and their mission.
As a small but growing company, we are able to remain efficient so that our rates are very reasonable. The vast majority of our resources are dedicated to adding value to our clients and not wrapped up in internal bureaucracy.
We are a very flat organization so there is little to no stove piping, and we outsource many of our back-office systems with proper security, of course, so we can remain on mission.
This strategy provides the foundation for the continued growth that we’re looking to achieve. We’re not trying to get too far out of our wheelhouse but we are looking into adjacent markets that would be a fit for our services.
We understand that we have to be flexible in terms of what our clients need and want in the government space. We want to be able to grow and deliver value to our clients and partners.
We’re also looking into a few very targeted and strategic commercial deals where our skills port nicely, especially in automation. We’re looking at several different opportunities, but we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin.
I believe our capabilities and services will resonate across our target market.”
