Page 70 - FCW, November/December 2019

Rising Stars
agencies describe Scates as an innovative leader who is resilient and eager to help others meet their own work requirements. He is “someone who has excellent collaboration and people skills,” said Reginald Brown, a deputy associate director at the Office of Personnel Management.
Scates said that although his
job has its daily challenges, his approach is to use any problem as an opportunity to “refine and improve the overall process.”
and the technology industry, and
he previously worked for the U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission. That diverse range
of experiences makes him ideally suited to be a sounding board for how federal cybersecurity policies might affect other entities in unexpected ways.
“He’s good at bridging the gap between the technology people
and the policy people,” said Elliott Phaup, a senior adviser to Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.). “Anyone who knows Rob knows he’s insanely thorough, so if you just let him talk he will go on for 10 to 15 minutes about one topic because he wants to make sure he puts everything on the table.”
Colleagues said Sheldon’s efforts are also having a tremendous
impact on state and local agencies’ cybersecurity readiness, particularly through his work with Information Sharing and Analysis Centers to share tools and intelligence for combating the latest threats.
encouraged him to bring Oddball’s agile chops to government. The company now works with several federal agencies — most notably the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
At VA, Oddball was part of the team that developed the Lighthouse Program — a developer portal providing APIs that allow outside organizations to tap into VA datasets. This year, Oddball secured its first prime contract — also with VA —
to provide product and delivery management, software development, DevOps expertise and other services in support of the Veteran-facing Services Platform.
Oddball is a charter member
of the Digital Services Coalition,
an association of newcomers to
the federal contracting space that stresses collaboration, innovation and agile delivery. Sorensen has
been particularly active in helping other veterans launch their post- military careers and has expanded his own team to nearly 50. In addition
to a growing base of government customers, the company supports commercial and not-for-profit clients across the country.
“We chose the name Oddball... because we do things differently,” Sorensen told FCW’s Steve Kelman earlier this year. “We take the time to understand the business case for the applications we’re building. We think this is a little odd in the federal market.”
ROBERT G. SHELDON
Head of Technology Strategy, Public Sector, CrowdStrike
The federal government has a wide range of resources at its disposal when it comes to research, so
it speaks volumes that so many executive branch agencies and congressional staffers rely on Robert Sheldon for advice.
As the leaders of CrowdStrike’s congressional affairs branch, Sheldon provides insight and intelligence
to lawmakers and staffers about cybersecurity threats that target critical infrastructure, federal agencies and elections as well as other topics.
He also serves on the IT Sector Coordinating Council, which acts as a conduit between government
TRAVIS SORENSEN
CEO, Oddball Inc.
Travis Sorensen, a service-disabled veteran, founded the digital services firm Oddball in 2015, and the company entered the federal market two years later after an 18F staffer
68 November/December 2019 FCW.COM