Courtney Kelly: The Accidental Strategist

Priya Dalwadi: Not a Calculator

Season two of Mission Possible closes with Priya Dalwadi, B/CORE's CFO and a finance leader who refuses to be the calculator. Priya grew up watching her father build a CPA practice now in its forty-fourth year, with clients still flying across the country to see him. The inheritance shaped her belief in finance as a human discipline. She brought it with her to GW, into Lockheed Martin's financial leadership program, and through her first GovCon rotation in pricing where she sat in the back of every room and had to learn to use her voice. She was the lead pricer on a fifty million dollar program win, the biggest award in her division at the time. In this episode, Priya talks about the early setback that forced her to speak up, the art of subcontractor negotiation, how she builds high-trust teams, and why pushing back on low-value work is a leadership move. She tackles imposter syndrome by admitting what she does not know. She frames AI and automation as tools to make finance faster, never as replacements for human judgment. Her advice to young finance professionals is simple: open mind, patience, grace, and a network you build one shoulder tap at a time. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:48 Meet Priya Dalwadi 01:33 The CPA's Daughter 03:16 First GovCon Rotation 04:33 Pricing Explained 05:56 Sitting in the Back of the Room 09:06 Negotiation and Relationships 10:44 Building High-Trust Teams 15:08 Imposter Syndrome 17:35 AI in Finance 19:27 Advice and Workload 21:58 Payoff and Closing Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem [https://www.linkedin.com/company/bridge-core]. At Bcore [http://www.bcore.com/], we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com [http://www.bcore.com/]. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Jake Huffman: One Level Deeper

Senior technologist Jake Huffman grew up in a North Carolina county with one stoplight, got rejected from architecture school, and fell into engineering because someone told him he wasn't an artist. A sophomore materials science class changed his direction. A steel plant nearly scared him out of metallurgy. A Coast Guard repair center gave him helicopter parts to build with no experience. And a graduate school math problem introduced him to writing code. Every turn came from the same instinct: go one level deeper than the job asks you to. In this episode, Jake talks about why boring systems fall apart, what overconfidence looks like from the inside, and the moment he realized it was more important for his team to function well than for him to be right. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 01:01 One Stoplight, One Wrestling Team 02:50 Rejected by Art School 06:42 White Hot Steel and Walking Away 08:11 Building Helicopter Parts for the Coast Guard 11:03 Craft Over Mission 15:04 When Systems Don't Fit in One Head 18:34 The Blind Spots of Big-Picture Thinking 24:44 Team Function Over Being Right 27:41 Scar Tissue 30:16 Learn the Old Stuff First 32:58 Build Your Own RAG 34:44 What AI Should Scare You About 36:40 Wrap Up Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem [https://www.linkedin.com/company/bridge-core]. At Bcore [http://www.bcore.com/], we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com [http://www.bcore.com/]. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Troy Scoran: Say Yes, Then Go

Troy Scoran is a technologist at B/CORE who built his career by raising his hand before anyone asked. He grew up in a western Pennsylvania town of two thousand people and three stoplights, got recruited off LinkedIn, and moved to Tysons Corner to join a fifteen-person startup with one condition: don't box me in. Chad and Zil brought Troy on to talk about what it looks like to build a career through initiative. The conversation went somewhere honest. Troy described how saying yes to everything at a small company gave him a view of the entire business that most people his age never get. Now he's figuring out where to go deep and who to bring with him. The three of them land on something worth hearing: the people who raise their hand early are the ones who get to choose what they become later. This episode is for anyone who has been the youngest person in the room and earned their seat by showing up. For practitioners building range and wondering when to specialize. And for anyone mid-career who is shifting from learning everything to leading others through it. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome from the Plane  00:44 Peruvian Chicken and First Impressions  01:16 How Troy and Zil Connected  04:12 Three Stoplights and Sixty Graduates  05:58 Saying Yes to the Move  06:58 Corner Apartment in Tysons  08:13 Sports, Coaching, and Strategy  12:37 Keep Me in Pennsylvania  14:17 Imposter Syndrome as Butterflies  15:52 Taking Production Down Overnight  17:35 You're Already on the Team  19:48 The Trade-Offs of Range  21:57 JSON Meets SQL  22:55 Full Stack Mentality  24:53 From Taker to Multiplier Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem [https://www.linkedin.com/company/bridge-core]. At Bcore [http://www.bcore.com/], we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com [http://www.bcore.com/]. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Sarika Lamont: The Cost of Standing Still

Sarika Lamont is the Chief People Officer at a B2B technology company and a former GovCon talent leader. She built an integrated talent management framework from scratch, pitched it to two different CEOs, and now leads AI transformation from the people side of the house. Chad and Zil brought Sarika on to talk about what happens when organizations refuse to change how they develop people. The conversation went deeper than expected. Zil described what it feels like to outgrow your leadership. Sarika explained why counter-offers only buy you six months.  The three of them land on something worth hearing: AI did not create the gap between how we manage people and how people actually grow. AI made that gap impossible to ignore. This episode is for anyone who has sat through a performance review that had nothing to do with their actual performance. For leaders who know they need to get closer to the work but don't know how. And for engineers wondering whether the old career ladder still leads anywhere. 00:00 Welcome and Setup 01:21 Sarika's Path Into People 03:32 HR's Identity Crisis 06:15 The GovCon Talent Gap 08:30 Leaner Teams, More Pressure 13:27 Retention Is Not a Compensation Problem 17:17 Career Ladders That Slow People Down 19:42 Burning It to the Ground 21:28 AI Makes Feedback More Human 26:06 Leaders Who Won't Get Their Hands Dirty 28:59 The Engineering Skills Shift 31:21 Building Close to Value 33:05 Tossing the Old Playbook 33:59 From Tool Adoption to Mindset Shift 35:33 Tiger Teams and the Right Personas 37:18 Prompting Variability 38:48 Getting People Off the Sideline 41:58 Focus Fridays and the AI Council 44:11 The Great Equalizer 47:14 Accountability When Everyone Has Access 53:00 Sunday Scaries and What Drives People to Stay 57:21 Good People Want to Work With Good People Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem [https://www.linkedin.com/company/bridge-core]. At Bcore [http://www.bcore.com/], we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com [http://www.bcore.com/]. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Courtney Kelly: The Accidental Strategist

Courtney Kelly is the Chief Strategy Officer at C Speed. She grew up in a small Massachusetts town, trained in ballet for 15 years, studied history, and planned on law school. When that path closed, she landed in aerospace and defense consulting doing competitive intelligence and price-to-win work. From there she moved into Raytheon's strategy group and later KPMG, where she built a core philosophy: strategy only matters if you execute against it. In this episode, Courtney unpacks how she navigates ambiguity as a Type A introvert, why performative leadership falls flat, and what it feels like being the junior person in the room during M&A integrations. The conversation connects strategy to mission outcomes, breaks down integration tradeoffs, and gets honest about boundary-setting in an always-on culture. 00:00 Meet Courtney Kelly 01:47 Early Life and Ballet 02:33 The Accidental Strategist 04:46 Consulting in Defense 07:32 Strategy Meets Execution 09:50 Type A in Ambiguity 14:02 Mission Focus in Delivery 17:09 M&A Battle Scars 18:44 Why Companies Do M&A 23:33 Work-Life Balance Reality 30:23 Introvert Leadership 32:59 Reading the Room 34:30 The Ambiguity Muscle 37:21 No Playbook 40:18 Closing Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem [https://www.linkedin.com/company/bridge-core]. At Bcore [http://www.bcore.com/], we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com [http://www.bcore.com/]. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.