HighlightCast

2023 For Highlight: This Year in Review

Today, we are led by CEO Aarish Gokaldas and VP of Corporate Strategy and Growth Ashley Nichols on a journey of retrospection for 2023 and a look into the future and hopes for 2024 at Highlight.

Tracking Trends While Looking Ahead: Federal Software Factories

Our VP, Ashley Nichols, sits down with VP, Kevin Long to discuss Rise8’s Prodacity, all things development and procurement, and how to push the envelope in development, software factories, and innovation in the federal sector.

Employee Ownership in Government Contracting

Highlight CEO Aarish Gokaldas takes the reigns of the HighlightCast today, joined by Senior Vice President of Venn Strategies Matt Pearce to discuss the fantastic work being done in Congress to advocate for employee-owned companies and broaden the horizons of ESOPs in the Government space.

Recruiting in Government Contracting

Today, we are joined by Highlight's Director of People and Culture, Fiona Sityar, and Recruiting Manager Matt Dotson to discuss all things recruiting. From breaking into the Government Contracting Industry, outlining the preferred qualifications, certifications, and classes of Government Clearances to how to engage with Highlight and what makes Highlight unique.

Meet Our New CEO Aarish Gokaldas

In this episode of the Highlightcast, VP Ashley Nichols sits down for an in-depth interview with our new Highlight CEO Aarish Gokaldas. They discuss his background, trends within GovCon, and advice for career development. We invite you to tag along and get to know him!

Software Asset Management in the Federal Sector

We welcome Ashley Nichols, VP for Corporate Strategy & Development, for her first time hosting today's episode of the HighlightCast discussing Software Asset Management in the federal sector. Today, Ashley is joined by Procurement Manager - Sarah Dryer, Program Manager & Cybersecurity Engineer - Kevin Milner, and Emilie Scantlebury - Director of Corporate Portfolio Development.  In this episode, we take an in-depth look at the current state of Software Asset Management, the biggest challeng...

Best Practices in Federal Communications

Listen to Highlight's Director of Corporate Portfolio Development Emilie Scantlebury discuss the best practices of Federal Communication, joined by Communications Program Manager Barry Lawrence, and our Mission Solutions BD Portfolio Director, Tom Perkins. In this episode, we discuss the core differences between Federal and Commercial Communications, Managing & Targeting a wide demographic across locations, cultures, and generations. And we were able to dive into accessibility and how comms ...

Episode #31: Development Series: Post-Production

Join us for the 3rd and final installment of our 3 Part Development Series. Discussing the last stage of the Federal Development Process Post-Development and Maintenence. Our host, Roman Zhelenko, digs into what Maintenance looks like, the best approach with the customer, shifting resources, workforce transition, and change management. Joining Roman once again, we have Special Guests Program Manager - Kevin Milner & Series Developer III Diljeet Singh.

Episode #30: Development Series: Production

The Development Series continues! Join us for part 2 of our 3 Part Series, taking a deep dive into the Federal Software and Application Development process, discussing in three stages of Pre-Production, Development, and Post-Development. Our host, Roman Zhelenko, picks up where we left off last week with our Development and Production episode, where we discuss and outline the best practices for development, how to learn in a new environment, how to improve the workflow, the challenges faced...

Episode #29: Development Series Pre-Production

Join us for our deep dive into the Federal Software and Application Development process, discussing the 3 stages of Pre-Production, Development, and Post-Development. In Episode One, we start with Pre-Production, what happens post-award of a contract, and laying the foundation for successful delivery.     Hosted by Roman Zhelenko, Highlight Director for Digital Government. Featuring special guests Kevin Long, Highlight VP of Digital Government and Kevin Milner, Program Manager. 

Episode #28: Breaking down Scorecard Bids with Joe Salgado

Listen to Highlight Marketing Manager Victoria Kruemmer and Director of Corporate Portfolio Development Emilie Scantlebury sit down to discuss Scorecard Bids with Joe Salgado from Red Team Consulting. With a variety of scorecard style procurements out now, and upcoming, Joe Salgado and Emilie Scantlebury give their tips, tricks & insights into how to tackle these opportunities. 

Episode #27: Low-Code Partner Series - ServiceNow

Our hosts sit down with Kevin Milner and Sarah Dryer to discuss ServiceNow - its dynamic use cases, trends, and capabilities within the Federal Sector. 

Episode #26: Low Code Partner Series - Drupal

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with Emilie Scantlebury and Eddie Fann to chat about Drupal. Drupal is a free and open-source content-management framework that can be tailored and customized to simple websites or complex web applications. The team sat down to chat about use cases, trends, and more! 

Episode #25: Low-Code Partner Series: UiPath

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with Emilie Scantlebury to discuss our partnership with UiPath to support delivering RPA and automation services to our Federal customers! 

Episode #24: Low-Code Partner Series - AWS

Highlight is a proud member of the AWS Partner Network. Adam McNair and Kevin Long sat down with Roman Zhelenko to discuss AWS, the use cases, the future of cloud services within the Federal sector. 

Episode 23: Discussion with Jared Shepard from Hypori

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with CEO of Hypori, Jared Shepard. Hypori is enabling secure BYOD within the Federal Sector. Hypori delivers remote access to cloud-powered enterprise apps by adding a separate, secure, 100% private, virtual workspace to any endpoint device. 

Episode 22: CATO with Bryon Kroger

Listen in to hear from Rise8 CEO, speak with our Highlight team about CATO, risk management, and trends across the federal sector. 

Episode #21: Small Business Partnerships & Utilization

On this episode, Adam, Kevin, and Tamar Mintz sit down with CEO Rish Patel from RP Professional Services and CEO Jatinder Sehmi from Audley Consulting Group, to discuss small business partnerships and collaboration. 

Episode 20: ToolChain & Software Factories

Adam McNair, Kevin Long, and Emilie Scantlebury sit down with Rise8, COO Matt Nelson and WeWork, Federal Sales Account Director Jay Sampson to discuss ToolChain as a Service and Software Factories within the Government Sector.

Ep. #19: DevSecOps Part 2

Our Hosts Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down again with Kevin Milner to continue our conversation from episode 17 about DevSecOps. We dive into building your DevSecOps toolkit, trends within government contracting, and more! 

Episode #18: Recap HIMSS 2021

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with Ashley Nichols and Emilie Scantlebury to discuss HIMSS 2021, emerging trends within the Health IT Federal sector, and meeting a robot!  

Episode #17: What is DevSecOps?

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with Kevin Milner to discuss what DevSecOps is, the real benefits, and how to make sure you have a high Bus Metric. Find out more in this month's episode! 

Episode #16: Code Challenges

Roman Zhelenko joins Adam McNair, Kevin Long, and Victoria Robinson to discuss code challenges best practices, strategies, and lessons learned. 

Episode #15: Year of Covid-19

On today's episode, Adam and Kevin sit down with Victoria to talk about a year of working during the pandemic. The group discusses their first impressions of Covid-19, work from home setups, new tools we have discovered, and the accomplishments over the past year. 

Episode #14: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Fiona Sityar, Highlight Human Resource Manager, joins us to discuss the development, importance, and more about Highlight's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program. 

Episode #13 - Collaboration with ISO 44001

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with Norma Watenpaugh of Phoenix Consulting Group to discuss her involvement with the development of the ISO 44001 standard, the impact on businesses, and collaboration best practices in business regardless of industry. 

Episode #12 - Administration Transition

Adam and Kevin sit down with Emilie Scantlebury and Victoria Robinson to discuss leadership transition, change management, and the impact on procurement.

Episode #11 - 2020 In Review

This Month, Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with members of our business development, marketing, and operations team to discuss 2020 accomplishments, challenges, and goals for the upcoming year. 

Episode #10 - Everything CMMC

Adam McNair and Kevin Long sit down with Highlight Technologies Internal Ops Manager, Mary Padberg, to discuss the DoD's new CMMC cybersecurity certification. From Highlights self assessment, to the audit process to the effect on the government contracting landscape. 

Episode 9 – Teleworking

Adam McNair and Kevin Long discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of Teleworking. They talk on adapting to new work from home set ups, collaborative software, work styles and more!

Episode #8 - Code Challenge

Episode #8 - Code Challenge

Episode #7 - ISO, CMMI, and Process Improvement

Adam McNair and Kevin Long are joined by Highlight's Manager of Operational Excellece, Devon Du Fur, to discuss ISO, CMMI, and process improvement. 

Episode #6 - The Rebrand

Adam McNair and Kevin Long discuss the recent rebranding of Highlight Technologies. 

Episode #5 - The Shutdown

Adam McNair and Kevin Long address the government shutdown, and different ways to handle things. They talk how companies are affected at an executive level, employee retention, and essential vs nonessential personnel on different projects. Plus, a strategy on how to aid current furloughed employees.

Episode #4 - Location, Location, Location

This episode of The HighlightCast brings another interesting perspective related to the business world. Anyone who has expertise in business growth knows the importance of location. A business’ location, from where they offer their main services or products, is way more than just identity. You will be surprised how much a location can impact the daily happenings of any business.

Episode #3 - Budget & Startups

On the 3rd episode of the HighlightCast, Adam and Kevin talk about the end of the fiscal year and how things are, for the government and contractors, at this point. Afterwards, they delve into a short series of topics, touching the cord of confrontations inside the industry in it's growth stage.

Episode #2 - New Generation GWACs & Security Clearances

On the second episode of the HighlightCast, hosts Adam McNair and Kevin Long, open up by discussing the purpose of the podcast; having another avenue to communicate with their employees, sharing insights on the latest news in the industry and some of the challenges faced by small businesses in the industry as well as innovative ways to overcome those challenges. The first topic discussed is multiple award contracts and government wide contracts which have been done for a very long time. Th...

Episode #1

On the very first episode of the HighlightCast, hosts Adam McNair and Kevin Long explain the structure of the podcast. Adam McNair is the Chief Operating Officer and Kevin Long is the Vice President for delivery at Highlight Technologies in Fairfax Virginia. They both discuss how they are a part of the small business community supporting the federal government and will be talking about things that concern small businesses. They will be sharing insights and opinions on the show, talk about ...