Huntsville Companies Earn Recognition as GSA’s Best Mentor-Protégé Program

HUNTSVILLE, ALA. – On June 17^th, the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Office of Small Business Utilization announced that Radiance Technologies, Inc., and Kord Technologies, Inc., both of Huntsville, Ala., earned GSA’s Mentor-Protégé award, Radiance as the Mentor and Kord as the Protégé. The GSA Mentor-Protégé Program encourages and motivates GSA prime contractors to assist small businesses, enhancing their capability to perform successfully on future contracts and subcontracts.

The award recognizes the Mentor-Protégé team that demonstrated the most exceptional growth, business development expansion, and overall business performance of all the program’s participants during a two-year period.

Bill Bailey, Radiance’s President, said “Fundamentally, the success of this relationship stems from the trust and respect Radiance and Kord have with each other, coupled with protégé support agreement hammered out among Radiance, Kord, and the General Services Administration.”

“The program is a win-win for both mentor and protégé and a great way for small businesses to establish the necessary infrastructure to eventually compete as prime contractors and grow a stable business,” said Deborah Eble, GSA’s Mentor Protégé Program Manager.

Teaching others often gives the satisfaction of seeing success and learning a thing or two in the process. That’s the general premise behind GSA’s Mentor-Protégé Program, which links experienced GSA contractors with small businesses to share processes knowledge, skills, and know-how.

The program’s main goal is to expand small business participation in government contracting. In addition, it helps large businesses meet their small business subcontracting goals.

“When done correctly, both participants benefit from the relationship built on trust in providing total government solutions,” Eble added.

When asked about the impact of the program to Kord, Tom Young, Kord’s President said, “Radiance’s mentorship helped us achieve significant business milestones much faster than we could have done it by ourselves. For example, our Quality Management System is certified to ISO 9000 standards, our Accounting System is approved by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, we competed for 22 contracts in 2015 and won six of those as a prime contractor and 8 of them as a subcontractor, over 60% win rate. This program helped us grow our revenue by 37% during the two years of the program and most importantly, allowed us to increase the number of great people at Kord by over 40%.”

Steve Sizemore, Mildred Quinley, Chasity Ash of GSA’s Office of Small Business Utilization presented the award at Radiance’s headquarters at 350 Wynn Drive on Tuesday, June 28^th.

Radiance Technologies is an employee-owned small business headquartered in Huntsville, Ala. Radiance has 12 corporate facilities and 15 project offices across 14 states and two foreign countries serving the Department of Defense, NASA, and national intelligence agencies. From concepts to capabilities, Radiance leads the way in developing customer-focused solutions in the areas of cyber solutions, systems engineering, prototyping and integration as well as operational and strategic intelligence including scientific and technical intelligence. More information can be found at www.radiancetech.com.

Kord Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, is a Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) focused on providing engineering, training, information technology, and programmatic support services to federal agencies. Kord supports the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Department of Homeland Security in six states and the national capital region. The company’s Quality Management System is ISO 9001-2008 certified and it has been a Boeing Gold or Silver Supplier for six consecutive years. For more information, visit www.kordtechnologies.com.