After a competitive four months and tens of thousands of votes, Executive Mosaic is excited to announce that the winner of the 2023 Wash100 popular vote competition is the resolute Department of Defense cornerstone, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
This year, a staggering nearly 40,000 votes were cast in support of the esteemed recipients of the 2023 Wash100 Award, and Austin soared above his competitors in a stunning last-minute voting campaign from his loyal supporters with record-breaking votes to cement his victory.
“The Department of Defense is on a two-year winning streak, as the GovCon community continues to enthusiastically come out in droves to support government agency and GovCon ecosystem executives in the Wash100 popular vote competition. This year, we received a surprising and overwhelming flurry of votes in the final hours of the contest that rearranged our top 10 and completely shifted the outcome of GovCon’s most exciting annual race for the popular vote,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and creator of the Wash100 Award.
“Congratulations to Secretary Austin on a well-deserved win, and thank you to our dedicated audience for your energetic and record-setting support in the Wash100 Award’s tenth anniversary celebration,” Garrettson continued. “Our team at Executive Mosaic has been committed to improving our recognition program year over year, and their dedication has made the Wash100 the most coveted executive award in the industry.”
The Wash100 Award, now in its tenth year, annually recognizes the most influential and powerful executives working in the government contracting landscape for their impact on government missions and innovation within the sector. Once the winners are announced at the start of each year, the popular vote race begins, and the GovCon community makes their voices heard by voting for their favorite leaders, colleagues and role models.
This year, Austin secured his third consecutive Wash100 Award for championing integrated deterrence and relentlessly working to advance the development of next-generation military technology capabilities. Learn more about why Austin was selected to this year’s list and his most notable accomplishments over the past year by reading his full profile here.
Now, with his Wash100 popular vote win, Austin joins other previously recognized popular vote winners like Air Force CIO Lauren Knausenberger and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Dr. Stacey Dixon.
Carahsoft President Craig Abod ended the race in a close second place just nine votes behind the defense secretary. Abod, a nine-time Wash100 winner, spent an unprecedented and impressive run of 10 weeks in the number one spot.
Rounding out the top three is Judi Dotson, president of the global defense sector at Booz Allen Hamilton, who made her debut on the Wash100 list this year.
Here is your 2023 Wash100 top 10 and the final vote standings:
“As an imperative, we also must recognize Roger Krone of Leidos, who is the only executive in the award’s history who has been recognized for an unbroken streak of 10 years. Krone is indisputably the winningest Wash100 executive in our decade-long history, scoring a perfect 10 out of 10,” said Garrettson.
Other impressive Wash100 winners at the top of the pyramid include four nine-time winners Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics, Matt Desch of Iridium, Craig Abod of Carahsoft and Chuck Prow of V2X, as well as three eight-time winners Lou Von Thaer of Battelle, Ramzi Musallam of Veritas Capital and Kathy Warden of Northrop Grumman.
Visit Wash100.com to learn more about this year’s executive lineup and the history of the award.
