Company Spotlight: Dynamic Pro

When Andrea Stone founded her Washington D.C.-based consulting firm Dynamic Pro Inc. (DPI) back in 2006, she knew she had a few serious questions she had to answer.

“My experience was mostly technical and I had little experience running operations within a company,” Andrea explains to Ivy Exec. “I had to ask myself: What’s our mission, our message, our DNA, our ethos, and how do we attract people that share those values?”

But even with such lofty questions to answer right from the outset, Andrea already was more than an expert in her new company’s key areas of focus: transportation and homeland security. After spending 15 years at Fortune 500 companies she made the move to the world of consulting, working for several years as an associate at a large management consulting firm, primarily providing subject matter expertise in decision support. This experience afforded Andrea a window into learning what could be done better to serve the client seeking assistance from a consulting firm—and, more importantly, planted the early seeds for DPI.

“I felt that there had to be an easier, faster, better way to get things done for clients,” Andrea recalls, noting that at larger consulting firms, the lead time to complete a task for a company can be much longer than necessary. “Every decision was by committee. Sometimes that delayed or added time and complexity to what the client wanted to get done.”

So in 2006, Andrea founded DPI with a simple mission: to always maximize the client’s time and resources. This mission has served the company well, with an impressive list of both public and private sector clients including Amtrak, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security, and other federal, state, and local organizations.

DPI offers a wide array of services that are relevant to the industries it serves including management consulting, information technology, and business services. DPI has grown steadily since inception and currently employs 40 people. With the goal of managing growth to maintain quality services, Andrea remains committed to operating as a boutique company with the kind of nimble and adaptive spirit that entails.

“As a small company, we offer a mature environment combined with an entrepreneurial spirit. It’s great for people looking for long-term prospects,” Andrea says, also noting that DPI has a strong management team that is committed to mentoring and coaching newer associates joining the ranks.

She is also, as a female entrepreneur in a male-dominated space, driven to find like-minded women to empower and hire to DPI. She notes that in highly technical fields such as cybersecurity, maintaining a healthy gender balance on her team has been a challenge.

“We have to figure out a way to encourage more women to get into technical fields,” she says, noting that supporting women’s groups is helpful in this regard. With this in mind, Andrea supports associations such as Women in Transportation and Women in Homeland Security. These organizations have strong STEM programs to encourage young professionals to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

In the meantime, DPI has another pressing challenge on the horizon: the 2016 election. When working in the public sector with government agencies as clients, a change in leadership, while inevitable, brings a whole new source of questions for Andrea.

“It’s a huge challenge for the government professional services industry. Regardless of who the next president will be, there will be change,” Andrea says. “We will need to maximize resources and we will need to be smart about how funding is prioritized as the American people are becoming increasingly attuned to how the government spends money.”

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Ivy Exec is excited to announce that nominations are now open for our upcoming list of 2016 Women-Led Companies to Know. Dynamic Pro is a prime example of the kind of company we are looking to discover and include in our list – performing exceedingly well in its industry, has a clear vision, innovative culture, and strong female leadership.  If you believe your company should land a spot on our list, nominate your company for consideration by filling out the survey below and we’ll get in touch with the next steps.