Meet Booz Allen's 2024 BEYA Winners

2023 BEYA Recipients all together

Pioneer Award

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Matice Wright-Springer

Senior Vice President

Matice Wright-Springer is a senior vice president in Booz Allen’s aerospace business. Her focus areas include the Joint All-Domain Command and Control Advanced Battle Management System; next-generation data solutions and analytics; organizational redesign; and digital transformation. Matice works across the firm to encourage collaboration, enhance productivity, and accelerate solutions that positively impact various military operational environments. Matice began her career in 1988, serving as the nation's first African-American female naval flight officer. She logged thousands of flight hours in the EC-130 and the E-6 aircraft. After serving in the Navy, she was presidentially appointed to serve as a White House fellow at the Department of Treasury. She returned to government service a few years later as a member of the Senior Executive Service at the Department of Defense (DOD).

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Most Promising Scientist Award

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Shavonn Watkins, Ph.D.

Associate

Shavonn Watkins, Ph.D., is an expert in international and domestic agricultural development in Booz Allen’s civil business. She serves as a science and engineering technical assistant and thought leader for federal, state, nonprofit, for-profit, and philanthropic clients on global food security, current and emerging agricultural pests, and sustainable agriculture-based solutions in the face of climate change. Drawing on her international network to build and expand client work, Dr. Watkins is dedicated to serving as a bridge for agriculture-based technologies and innovation to reach and benefit all humanity, especially resource-poor and underserved populations worldwide.

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Science Spectrum Trailblazer Award

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Mokeli Pelamoko

Lead Associate

Mokeli Pelamoko is a senior lead data scientist specializing in dynamic and action-oriented data science and analytics in Booz Allen’s chief technology office. He has spearheaded the development of innovative analytic and machine learning solutions for diverse clients such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Food and Drug Administration, and Department of Labor. He harnesses the power of statistics and machine learning to uncover valuable insights and presents them to clients through engaging visual narratives. With over 17 years of experience, including prior roles as a Six Sigma Black Belt, he possesses an exceptional blend of process optimization coupled with advanced data science expertise. Through his dedication to data science and analytics, Mokeli is committed to advancing government stewardship, directly benefiting the lives of U.S. taxpayers.

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Derek Turner

Lead Associate

Derek Turner is a data engineering expert in Booz Allen’s global defense business. He is the product lead for acquisition and procurement under the Advana program supporting DOD. He develops extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools; architects scalable and secure end-to-end solutions; and implements robust data quality and governance practices. With his deep dedication and expertise in data engineering, Derek enriches the STEM community with his invaluable contributions.

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Modern-Day Technology Leader Award

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Andrew Ajilore

Consultant

Andrew Ajilore is a leading developer in Booz Allen’s global defense business, supporting mission-critical challenges across DOD. Working with the power platform tech stack, Andrew has created robust solutions connecting clients to the vast number of data-related operations within their organizations. He has provided deep expertise on cloud technologies and power platforms for offices within the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. His unwavering interest in IT has fueled his continuous career growth.

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Betel Asfaha

Senior Consultant

Betel Asfaha has a proven track record of creating innovative solutions, as she works to revolutionize project methodologies. Working in Booz Allen’s civil business, she orchestrates seamless system integrations as an implementation member of the Product and Technology Ecosystem and Management Services (PTEMS) project with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Betel channels her enthusiasm into new challenges, bringing her skills and genuine passion for STEM.

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Tanishia Bailey

Associate

Tanishia Bailey is a technology expert in Booz Allen’s civil business. She is a system integrator supporting the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Marketplace program. Tanishia played an instrumental role in launching the new Marketplace Plan Management System (MPMS), a three-year project to modernize CMS's plan management system and operations. She manages plan data management, systems integration, testing and implementation, and post-implementation support of MPMS during the qualified health plan certification window. Tanishia is dedicated to project success, strong data quality, and continuity of healthcare information provided to consumers on Healthcare.gov.

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Gerald Battiste

Associate

Gerald Battiste is passionate about combining technology and engineering to create solutions to the problems that face humanity. Within Booz Allen’s civil business, he is a senior data engineer for the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). In this role, he leads the data management team on the Resilient Supply Chain project. In an environment of constant change, Gerald is driven to discover, innovate, and engineer solutions that will help our clients, the nation, and the world.

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Cornelius Bryant

Associate

Cornelius Bryant is a lead electrical engineer in Booz Allen’s global defense business, specializing in electrical integration of aircraft, helicopters, and air vehicles for the military. For the past six years, Cornelius has taken aircraft electrical concepts from design layout to product fabrication to integration and installation in various air vehicle platforms. These projects include the UH-1 helicopter, Presidential Helicopter program, P-3 Ocean Harvest, FAB-T upgrade for the System Integration Laboratory, and Boeing Military E-6B aircraft Kapton project. Cornelius also mentors Black boys and girls through tutoring to introduce them to the engineering field.

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Tyler Bryant

Associate

Tyler Bryant is the marketing and communications lead for The Helix, Booz Allen's Center for Innovation. Showcasing our most innovative and mission-critical capabilities, including 5G and AI, The Helix is an ideal environment for Tyler to bring together her passions for innovation and tech exploration. As part of Booz Allen’s chief technology office, Tyler builds and executes robust campaigns that raise awareness, deepen partnerships, and promote the center’s offerings and events. Tyler has also led diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts promoting the technological contributions of diverse groups during Pride, Black History Month, Disability Awareness Month, Women's History Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month.  

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Ashley Bryant-Baker

Associate

Ashley Bryant-Baker is a lead data scientist in Booz Allen’s chief technology office, supporting our work on healthcare research, medical software solutions, and data management at the Veterans Health Administration. With a passion for health data science, Ashley supports analysis and machine learning in health initiatives. She is extremely proud of her efforts alongside VA caregivers to collect and analyze data to improve long COVID care. Ashley believes data is an essential tool to help make society more equitable, safe, and inclusive and uses her knowledge and skills to improve all communities, especially those that are underserved.

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Ryan Douglas

Senior Consultant

Ryan Douglas is a cloud engineer in Booz Allen's national security business, supporting our federal clients on cloud infrastructure and computer science initiatives. Ryan’s STEM work and passion converge as he uses innovative problem solving and data insights to make meaningful contributions to the ever-evolving landscape of technology and business.

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Jonathan Dyer

Associate

Jonathan Dyer is the technical lead on the IRS advanced analytics platform’s application team as part of Booz Allen’s comprehensive support of the agency. He leads a team of engineers applying native cloud technologies to provide a development environment for customer data scientists and deploy AI applications to customer environments. As an AI expert in our chief technology office, Jonathan is passionate about building and securing the next generation of cloud-native AI systems using emerging technologies like generative AI.

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JJ File

Associate

JJ File is a project engineer specializing in ammunition modernization in Booz Allen’s global defense business. He supports our Army clients, including Project Manager Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM MAS) under the Joint Program Executive Office Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO A&A) by conducting research, development, testing, and evaluation of ammunition programs. JJ leads program testing and evaluation efforts, provides technical expertise to guide the technical direction, and performs analyses to inform programmatic decisions. He is passionate about using novel engineering solutions to make meaningful impacts for end users.

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Gary Fitzgerald

Lead Associate

Gary Fitzgerald is an immersive solutions software engineer within Booz Allen’s national security business supporting our DOD and intelligence community clients. He develops virtual reality and augmented reality collaboration and geospatial visualization tools as well as the backend services to power these tools. In addition to his experience developing extended reality applications, Gary has over 25 years of experience developing geospatial and real-time applications.

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Marcus Hilson

Associate

Marcus Hilson is a full-stack software engineer within Booz Allen’s global defense business. He supports our work with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Soft Copy Keys program. Proficient in Node.js, Express, Angular, React, JAVA, Docker, DevOps, and other open-source tools and processes, Marcus builds and improves high-level business apps for NGA. A rising engineer with a mission and purpose, Marcus is committed to creating new web solutions to solve our clients’ most challenging issues.

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Neb Kitila

Senior Consultant

Neb Kitila is a systems engineer within Booz Allen’s chief technology office. He deploys, maintains, and troubleshoots the firm’s server infrastructure as part of the hosting services team. Neb is a self-driven and highly motivated professional with a solid technical background.

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Brian McNair

Lead Associate

Brian McNair is a senior lead engineer within our chief technology office. He supports and manages Microsoft Teams events, meetings, and streaming components across the enterprise as part of the unified communications (UC) team. Within a few short years, Brian transitioned the company from Lync to Skype, to Cisco Webex, and most recently, to MS Teams. He was instrumental in ensuring Booz Allen had a highly reliable virtual UC stack leading into the COVID-19 pandemic. His proactive approach helped our employees adapt quickly to remote work and maintain efficient team communications and collaboration.

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Lianna Newman

Senior Consultant

Lianna Newman is a scrum master supporting technological and operational solutions on Booz Allen's VA Benefits Integrated Delivery Appeals project. Lianna organizes multiple scrum teams, trains new team members, facilitates sprint ceremonies, and fosters team and project collaboration. With prior experience as a full-stack developer, Lianna aids in project solutions and identifies potential risks for developers. Lianna volunteers with several organizations focused on diversifying STEM. While working in Booz Allen’s civil business, Lianna is also pursuing a master's degree focused on examining how microaggressions push people with intersecting identities out of STEM fields. Through this research, Lianna hopes to combat microaggressions and ease the pathway to STEM for historically excluded groups.

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Irvin Nigarura

Associate

Irvin Nigarura is a product lead and manager for one of Booz Allen’s law enforcement clients. An expert in computer and electronics engineering in Booz Allen’s civil business, Irvin focuses on electronic device security, analyzing client devices and then providing bespoke solutions to further their critical mission. Solutions that Irvin has developed have been critical to closing some high-profile and high-priority cases for the client. Irvin also has a passion for AI and machine learning models and techniques and looks forward to applying these concepts to accelerate the client mission.

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Ade Oyalowo

Associate

Ade Oyalowo is an advanced data scientist and researcher in Booz Allen's chief technology office. He combines computer programming, subject domain research, and advancements in AI to help federal healthcare agencies discover novel insights from complex datasets. Among his many accomplishments, Ade co-developed software to analyze medical research data in a Level 1 Trauma Center. He has also co-published peer-reviewed articles about clinical informatics and COVID-19.

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Andrae Rose

Lead Associate

Andrae Rose is a user experience (UX) architect in Booz Allen’s civil business. He supports our work for DOD’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) using AI/machine learning (ML)-driven technology for search engines, military readiness visualizations, and financial management solutions. With years of experience understanding how to identify users' needs and required experiences and designing high-impact digital solutions, Andrae develops search engines built on AI/ML technology for DOD solutions to enhance situational awareness and provide UX oversight across various digital products on Advana. He also strives to improve diversity and inclusion in UX design; he sees it essential to how user-centered and equitable design solutions are needed to foster innovation and fulfill ethical responsibilities to underrepresented communities.

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Tiara Taylor

Associate

Tiara Taylor is the lead engineer for Booz Allen's law enforcement clients focused on hardware recovery and reverse engineering. An electronics engineering expert in our civil business, she salvages severely damaged devices associated with active investigations. Her ability to recover micro-sized components with complex dependencies, which requires a high degree of skill and craftsmanship, is why her clients deeply trust her to handle their most difficult cases.

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Tracey W. Thomas, Ph.D.

Lead Associate

Dr. Tracey W. Thomas is a program manager in Booz Allen’s civil business. Focused on vaccines and therapeutics against emerging health threats, Tracey provides her expertise to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Coordination Operations Response Element (H-CORE). It is a division within the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) that brings together government experts to partner with public health and industry stakeholders to fast-track solutions to health security threats. With a background in molecular biology, Tracey provides programmatic and technical support to biodefense clients in the health and global defense businesses to develop, acquire, and distribute vaccines and therapeutics to the U.S. population and those serving the military.

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Nicole Wishart

Associate

Nicole Wishart is an IT project manager in Booz Allen’s civil business. Nicole supports our wide-ranging work for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as the workstream lead for the gag clause prohibition compliance attestation and agent broker compensation data collection. She also leads cross-workstream process improvement initiatives for the no surprises and transparency work for Booz Allen's Marketplace Systems Integrator project for CMS. She is supporting work to build system functionality to collect annual reporting requirements from plans and issuers as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which established consumer protections related to surprise billing and transparency in healthcare. Nicole is passionate about supporting workforce diversity.

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Averston Worthy

Associate

Averston Worthy is a strategy and organization transformation lead in Booz Allen’s civil business. He has supported Booz Allen’s work in large healthcare transformation initiatives across the Department of Veterans Affairs and DOD. He redesigns strategy and enterprise operations, institutes resilient program management infrastructures, and advances the conversation around the future of healthcare delivery through relevant, forward-thinking thought leadership. Averston envisions a future where accessible, affordable, and quality healthcare is the standard.

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Celebrating a Legacy of Excellence

Since 2005, BEYA has recognized over 100 Booz Allen employees for their excellence in the fields of engineering, science, and technology. See more Booz Allen leaders recognized by BEYA in the last five years:

Past BEYA Winners

2023 BEYA Winners

Justine Baker, Lead Associate

Jacklyn Ebiasah, Associate

Howard Foard, Principal

James Hampton, Lead Associate

Siraaj Hasan, Principal

Anthony "AJ" Lambert, Jr., Associate

Christina Leggett, Ph.D., Associate

Ricky Reid, Vice President

Paul Robinson, Senior Associate

Leslie Stevens-Johnson, Senior Associate

Ebony Thomas, Senior Associate

Samira Willis, Lead Associate

Tanya Zanders, Associate

Ashleigh Smith, Associate

2022 BEYA Winners

Bahirah Adewunmi, Associate
Karolyn Babalola, Ph.D., Lead Associate
Michelle Carrington, Lead Associate
Stephanie Jenkins, Senior Associate
Germaine Johnson, Lead Associate
Christa Jordan, Lead Associate
Nicholas Lee, Ph.D., Associate
LaToya Robinsonn, Lead Associate

Ashleigh Smith, Associate

2021 BEYA Winners

Erica Banks, Principal
Andrea Blackwell, Lead Engineer
Malena Clark, Senior Lead Engineer
Gaitan Eylia, Senior Lead Technologist
Sian Lewis, Lead Scientist
Miesha Lites, Senior Lead Technologist
Dameon Ming, Senior Lead Technologist
Jennifer Mosquera, Lead Technologist
Sade Ruffin, Lead Engineer

2020 BEYA Winners

Leslie Allen, Senior Associate
Andreen Anglin, Associate
Patrice Clark, Principal
Valerie Conley, Principal
Robert Crawford, Senior Associate
Sean Spence, Associate
Jason Vann, Senior Lead Technologist

2019 BEYA Winners

Walter Hackett, Associate
Stephanie Moore, Lead Associate
Al Salaam Taalib, Lead Associate
Troy Wallace, Lead Associate
Brandon Whittington, Associate

Booz Allen is committed to creating a more equitable workplace where everyone can achieve their full potential. Learn more about our commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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