Richard White of Harris Corporation: Latest on DC area expansion

More than two years ago, Richard White packed his bags and headed to Washington, DC. His mission: to help Harris Corporation, an international communications and IT company headquartered in Melbourne, Fla., establish a greater presence in the Washington, DC area. As vice president of Harris’s Washington operations, White has been busy building up its Government Communications Systems Group (GCS), one of four major operating units at Harris, whose clients include the Department of Defense, Intelligence community, as well as several civilian agencies. His main goal, he says, is to stay focused. “There’s no lack of things to bid on in this town,” he says. “We’re focusing on specific areas that play to our core expertise.” Here White shares how Harris is enlarging the company’s footprint in the Washington, DC area in several key fields: healthcare, cyberspace, and intelligence work.

ExecutiveBiz: Tell us about your Washington Operations.

Richard White: Our Government Communications Systems Group has grown its presence in the Washington, DC area into an organization that operates several business entities. For example, we do work with the intelligence community at Annapolis Junction, in Maryland. We’re also doing work in healthcare and cyberspace issues, to include security, in northern Virginia. Our operations grew to a scale where it was time to start connecting the dots; we needed to unite those various businesses in this region. That’s what Washington Operations is all about.

ExecutiveBiz: How do you plan to connect the dots?

Richard White: A lot of the folks we’ve hired over the last couple years in the region are new to Harris. Because our corporate headquarters is in Florida, as is a significant portion of our GCS work, they don’t always get a sense of what Harris is. Our tagline is “assured communications.” Really Harris, and all of our businesses, are on the leading edge of information and mission convergence. So, we’re helping our team in the region better understand what we do as a company, and what the different businesses in this region are doing in healthcare, cyberspace, and intelligence.

ExecutiveBiz: How are you getting that message out there?

Richard White: Through personal interactions: round tables and town hall meetings with our leadership. We’ve also created something called “Virtual Campus.” The Harris team in the greater DC region can log in and find out what’s happening. They can also make connections through orientations when they’re coming in as new employees. We now have, in this region, a mini-version of our customer briefing center. We’re going to start using that to help employees get a broader sense of Harris. Within the next month or so we’ll start to include that as part of the orientation process.

ExecutiveBiz: You have plans underway to hire more staff for Harris’ regional operations. Where do those efforts now stand?

Richard White: We’re having success. We plan to hire 300 to 400, half for our IT services business, the other half for our development side (GCS). As for GCS, specifically, we’re on track to hire 150 to 200 professionals within a 12-month period. Ultimately, those hiring efforts are not being driven by a linear process. They’re being driven by multiple businesses here in the region all having needs. So, we’re spreading out our hiring activities over multiple businesses and contracts that we’ve either won or expect to win. We plan to continue to hire 12 or more people a month, we’ll stay on track that way.

ExecutiveBiz: How have you been strengthening your cybersecurity portfolio over the last year?

Richard White: We actually don’t limit our cyber work to just security. We take a much broader approach and refer to it as Cyber Space Solutions, which encompasses cybersecurity, cloud computing, secure service hosting, application development and Infrastructure support assurance. This effort is led by one of the nation’s most respected cyberspace experts, the Hon. Dale Meyerrose, former CIO of the U.S. Intelligence Community and a retired U.S. Air Force Major General who’s run some of the nation’s most critical networks. We also acquired Crucial Security Inc., in early 2009. At Harris, we like to look at where cyberspace is going and what it will be like to live in the cloud.

ExecutiveBiz: What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Richard White: Most people don’t know that my long term goal is to retire in Rome and only have to make two decisions a day: what food to eat and which wine to go with it.

ExecutiveBiz: Lastly, on a personal note, do you miss Florida? How does DC compare?

Richard White: I grew up in the north so having four distinct seasons again is something that I’m enjoying. There’s also so much to do in this part of the East Coast. The ocean is a couple hours east. Four hours north and you can be at a Broadway show, while an hour or so west you can be whitewater rafting.  The DC region is known for long hours and hard work, which all of us here understand is par for the course and we gladly do. Having so many options for the time spent out of work I think is one of the greatest benefits of the region.

Posted by Staff Writer on Thursday, October 29th, 2009. Filed under Executive Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry