Executive Mosaic is honored to announce John Jumper, chairman and CEO of Leidos, as the newest inductee into the Wash 100, the premier group of leaders who create value for the American public and execute strategic vision at the intersection of the public and private sectors.

Jumper was chairman and CEO of SAIC in the lead up to that company’s September 2013 split into the ‘new’ SAIC and Leidos, which provides solutions and services in health, engineering and national security.

“The whole idea was for both entities to gain access to additional markets, to expand and to decrease our cost structure,” Jumper told the Washington Business Journal. “We can completely remove our conflict of interest, which for Leidos opens opportunities of about $37 billion a year that we didn’t have before.”

Jumper added that the move was designed “to change ourselves from what was 1,000 flowers blooming, a company [still rooted] in employee ownership with hundreds of operations that were not well coordinated, into one that can share technology across the enterprise. The separation allows us to break the rubber band.”

Jumper joined the private sector in 2005 after serving in the U.S. Air Force for 39 years, including as chief of staff during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom when he was the most senior uniformed Air Force officer and oversaw the training, organization and equipage of more than 700,000 active duty, guard, reserve and civilian forces serving at home and abroad.

He had previously held a number of high-ranking positions, including commander of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force base, deputy chief of staff for Air and Space operations at the Pentagon, and senior military assistant to two Defense Secretaries.

Jumper logged more than 1,400 combat hours as a command pilot during his military service and at different times commanded a fighter squadron, two fighter wings, a numbered Air Force, and U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Allied Air Forces Central Europe. He served two tours of duty in Southeast Asia.

 

As he reflects on the split and look forward, Jumper noted that “the challenges facing our customers are taking on new dimensions.”

“The bigger issues for the coming years are first, how to achieve the next level of military capability without depending on traditional modernization of big expensive platforms, and second, the vulnerability of our nation’s digital and physical economic infrastructure from cyber attacks, natural disasters, terrorism and other ’new-world’ dangers,” Jumper said.

Executive Mosaic extends its congratulations to John and the rest of the Leidos organization.