Mike DeFede

As a teenager, Mike got his first taste of running a small business when the family spun off a small Internet service provider. A few years later, he left the family business, spending the next 15+ years helping Government and Corporate entities transform their organizations in Lockheed Martin and Vencore. Intelligent Shift was a chance to combine his small business roots and his passion for organizational consulting and engineering within the Intel Community. Mike has run portfolios of over 100 Million a year across 4 different IC agencies, with consistent growth and 95+% average award fees. He’s held roles in program management, business capture, and engineering with a focus on cyber, software, space, analysis, and systems engineering. He earned an MS in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and a BS in Computer Engineering from West Virginia. Mike lives in Fairfax VA with his wife Amanda and three girls. They spend too much time playing board games, doing puzzles, and playing princess wedding. Amanda grew up around small business too and founded McIntyre-DeFede law which specializes in family, education and criminal law.

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Alissa Redding

Alissa Redding started her professional career at Lockheed Martin with aspirations to transition from being a software engineer to a patent attorney. But her passion for solving problems and working directly with clients quickly changed and she never looked back. Alissa went on to get her masters degree from Johns Hopkins in Computer Science and over the last 15 years has led development teams, transitioned critical mission systems to operations, served in lead development roles, led and won strategic new acquisition efforts, oversaw change management initiatives, and focused on the strategic leadership and management of a large portfolio of programs. Outside of work Alissa is passionate about giving back to the Northern Virginia community including roles on the Fairfax County Community Action Advisory Board for three years and as the sustainer representative on the Junior League of Northern Virginia (JLNV) Board of Directors. Alissa lives with her family in Oak Hill, VA where she enjoys being a mom to twins. They are found most weekends at the beach in Lewes, Delaware where they are involved in outdoor activities to include kids' triathlons, wakeboarding, riding waves, and of course sandcastle building.

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Mike Matthews

Mike Matthews was born and raised in Hershey, PA. He attended the University of Virginia where he was a varsity athlete in cross country and track & field; graduating in 1999 with a Bachelor’s degree in American Government. After graduation, he moved to Arlington, Va where he currently resides with his wife (Wendy), 4 daughters (Riker, Piper, Levee, Lai), and dog (Twig). Mike earned an Engineering Management Masters degree through Eastern Michigan University, graduating with a focus in Project Management. Professionally, Mike began his career as an Integration Analyst for Thomson Financial building and analyzing financial software applications for financial institutions. His next role was a Systems Engineer Tech Op for Step9 Software, deploying and maintaining a product suite for telecom companies. For the last 15 years Mike has worked for Vencore (formerly Lockheed Martin and The SI Organization) in system engineering/integration and management roles. In 2002 Mike started on the management track and has held a number of project and program management roles providing system engineering support for the US Government. Mike has managed diverse information management and system integration programs that ranged in size from 5 to 450 people.  Mike's leadership view- “we don’t just apply people to projects; we build careers by taking into account, not only past experiences and knowledge, but career aspirations and work/life balance of the individual.”