Monday, November 20, 2006; D05

Position: Chief executive, Robbins-Gioia LLC, an Alexandria provider of program management consulting services to government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Career Highlights: Chief operating officer, Sun Microsystems Federal Inc.; vice president, strategic operations, Sun Microsystems Federal; vice president, general contracting and infrastructure solutions, Sun Microsystems Inc.; vice president, North and South America operations, Sun Microsystems; president, Sun Microsystems Federal; director, sales, program management, product engineering and marketing, Sun Microsystems Federal Inc.; director, civilian agencies, Unisys Corp.; and director, financial services, Burroughs Corp.

Age: 52

Education: BA, business administration, Salisbury University.

Personal: Lives in Vienna with his wife, Teri. The couple has three daughters, Kelly, 27, a teacher; Kristen, 26, a sales associate; and Courtney, 18, a college student.

How did you get to where you are?

I think it's fairly easy for anyone to move forward in a company. There is no magic to it. There is a lot of hard work and focus. And I think a lot of executives make it too complicated, frankly. You have to put the time into your trade. If you ask me what I think is the single-most attribute that matters it would have been an unbelievable passion and drive to accomplish. Business is as simple as helping people accomplish what they're trying to accomplish by staying focused on their mission and listening.

I would say success is a gradual process. There are turns in everybody's career when you reach out and just grab a hold of an opportunity. For me, the biggest opportunity was at Sun Microsystems and taking a chance on that start-up. I think most people are not willing to take the turn in life; often people stay the course too long. You have to be willing -- after you've paid your dues -- to step outside the box. I've always been a risk-taker and willing to step out of the box. A lot of times, you don't really want to get involved in how others judge your success. You want to find your own success for yourself. I think I've always done that, too. You have to be well-rounded. You also have got to be a huge motivator of teams, people and projects.

I decided to hitch my wagon to technology in the late 1970s. It was really interesting to be part of the technology revolution. I really believed that advanced technology was going to be the future. You could see that the computer revolution was in its infancy. And I thought it didn't matter what the functional area was. I knew that I needed to learn them all. Sales, marketing, program management, operations, financial -- every aspect that touched technology I tried to immerse myself in. And it turned out to be a great decision over the past 30 years.

Probably the most interesting challenge was after Sept. 11. We had actually lost our facilities in New York -- the 26th and 27th floors (of the South Tower of the World Trade Center) -- and we had to basically restart the operation from scratch. The emotion and the willing spirit of everybody involved to rebuild our New York operations from that point was probably the most exhilarating. You learn so much about the human spirit. You tend to reach a lot deeper and make decisions more crisply, timely with more focus. And that serves you well in every job that you have.

I've always been results-oriented and that's why it's such a great fit for me here at Robbins Gioia because we have a very great results culture. We are the preeminent honest broker helping customers achieve their objective and results today.

-- Judith Mbuya