President’s Awards – 3rd Quarter 2023

Each month via SPOTLIGHT, our employee engagement platform, SMS President Matt Rosecan recognizes employees who demonstrate our values of collaboration, commitment, and creativity. Congratulations to the third quarter President’s Award recipients for 2023, Rebecca Geist Latina and Steve Youngblood!

SMS is excited to recognize Rebecca Geist Latina with September’s President’s Award for demonstrating our values of collaboration, commitment, and creativity. Rebecca has been the Project Control Officer (PCO) for 3 years on a task order supporting the Air Force out of Hanscom AFB. As the PCO, Rebecca’s role includes monitoring and managing the completion of training, timesheet compliance, as well as the tracking of financials, accounting, and purchasing for a contract valued at over $600M. Earlier this year, Rebecca started taking on greater responsibilities including the delivery of crucial weekly, monthly, and semi-annual contract deliverables. In addition, she has been the backup for our purchasing team which had a very significant number of purchases at the end of the fiscal year. Rebecca provides rational and sage input to the management team and has been a key part of the team’s success with her attention to detail, hunger to learn, and willingness to stretch beyond her comfort zone to help and take on greater responsibility. She makes everyone that she meets and works with want to be better both professionally and personally. Thank you, Rebecca!

Steve Youngblood earned July’s President’s Award for demonstrating our values of collaboration, commitment, and creativity. Steve, a member of SMS’ Platform Engineering team, made his first code contribution this July to an upstream open-source project maintained by our partner Gruntwork. Contributing to an open-source project is no small feat. It requires not only technical prowess but also the ability to collaborate with a diverse group of developers from around the world. By making this contribution, Steve has demonstrated a commitment to the broader tech community and a willingness to share knowledge for the betterment of all. Contributing represents countless hours of learning, coding, and refining one’s skills. The feeling of satisfaction derived from such an accomplishment is universal among developers, and it’s a testament to Steve’s dedication to the craft and a sign of potential for future achievements. Steve’s contribution to the Gruntwork Infrastructure-as-Code library is a clear indication of his technical capabilities, collaborative spirit, and commitment to the open-source community. These contributions also strengthen our strategic partnership with Gruntwork as we continue to work together towards innovation in Cloud Computing, DevOps and Platform Engineering. Great work, Steve!