Executive Mosaic is honored to announce Mark Kontos, MITRE Corp. senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer, as the newest inductee into the Washington 100, the premier group of leaders who drive innovation and growth at the intersection of the public and private sectors.

Kontos joined MITRE eight years ago as the organization was diversifying its work by applying the system engineering capabilities it had traditionally provided to the national security and aviation safety sectors towards national problems in areas including homeland security, enterprise modernization and healthcare.

“It was a period of significant transition for the company,” Kontos told GovCon Exec. “I saw this as a great opportunity to help MITRE address the related business and financial challenges that are involved, such as enhancing the investment process, improving controls, ensuring consistency of business processes, and meeting the increased need for analytic and business decision support.”

MITRE is a not-for-profit that operates federally funded research and development centers (FFRDC) and Kontos brought experience serving as a defense- and energy-related manager at a FFRDC to his post.

Since joining the organization, Kontos has helped grow MITRE’s capabilities and reach by making sure its financial capacity, business processes, business models, and operating and control systems “kept pace with the vision and dedication of the all the people involved in developing and expanding these FFRDCs.”

“The single most important development is how we’ve improved the ways in which we engage with our customers to deliver solutions aimed at addressing their most intractable problems,” Kontos added.

“Our financial organization has helped the company to deliver those services and solutions at a unit cost that since 2008 has increased at less than half the rate of inflation.”

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Since Kontos joined the organization, MITRE has added at least the following sponsors and co-sponsors to the FFRDCs it manages:

• the Veterans Affairs Department; co-sponsor to the Center for Enterprise Modernization
• the Department of Homeland Security; sponsor of the Homeland Security Systems Engineering Development Institute
• the Department of Health and Human Services; sponsor of the new CMS Alliance for Healthcare Modernization
• the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; sponsor of the Judiciary Engineering and Modernization Center

Kontos told GovCon Exec that his focus has more recently shifted from improving processes to improving MITRE physical environment “as we modernize our facilities and ensure our technical staff members have the most up-to-date tools and equipment with which to do their work.”

“I look forward to completing this period of transition and solidifying the gains we’ve made in how we operate and how we create and deliver value to sponsors and customers.”

“We will continue to build on that foundation and will apply the lessons learned to our newest FFRDC—the CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare.”