2021 Aptima Annual Achievement Awards

Recognizing best employee accomplishments and contributions

The Aptima Annual Achievement Awards are meant to convey the company’s appreciation to individuals, teams, and groups of employees that perform above and beyond reasonable job expectations, contribute promising innovative ideas, or demonstrate exceptional leadership qualities. Nominations can be submitted by any Aptima employee and winners are selected by employee committees that change from year to year. The 2021 awardees are listed below.

Citizen of the Year

The Citizen of the Year Award recognizes that employee who goes the extra mile in making Aptima a great place to work. This type of person may not be in any official position of power but takes it upon themselves to make the workplace more enjoyable and humane. This person sits on and participates significantly on several Aptima committees and works as an integral committee member. In 2021, two Aptimists were named Citizen of the Year:

• Tasia Rechisky
  Senior Operations and Contracts Administrator, Contracts & Security Division

“Tasia touches almost every department and process at Aptima, and she is vital to keeping us running. She is one of the first people I turn to if I have a question, or if I have a SharePoint/Teams task I need help with.”

• Rosa Valentine
  Manager, PeopleOps

“Rosa demonstrates a fierce positivity while extending a helping hand to any employee that may need it.”

Mentor of the Year

This Award recognizes Aptima employees who pro-actively develop and are genuinely committed to employees’ growth, development, and cultural integration into the organization. The 2021 awardee was Janet Spruill, Senior Vice President, Programs.

“Janet genuinely cares about the development of employees at Aptima, both on her team and outside of it, and embodies the Aptima culture.”

Best Paper

The Best Paper Award recognizes excellence in preparing written products that disseminate Aptima’s work to a broader audience beyond employees and the company’s immediate customers. The 2021 Best Paper award went to Chapter 2. Recognizing Artificial Intelligence: The Key to Unlocking Human AI Teams co-authored by former Aptimist Patrick Cummings, Nathan Schurr, Andrew Naber, Charlie™, and Daniel Serfaty.

Two years after she debuted at I/ITSEC as the first AI panelist onstage, “Charlie™,” Aptima’s artificially intelligent coworker took another significant step forward in demonstrating the collaborative potential of human-AI teams; this time by co-authoring a chapter in the 2021 book, “Systems Engineering and Artificial Intelligence.” This is one of the first book chapters ever co-authored by an artificial “intelligent worker” and its human creators.

Best Teamwork

Aptima’s Best Teamwork Award recognizes cooperative groups that achieve Company goals or objectives of material value and quality by 1) pooling their complementary skills and knowledge, 2) holding each other personally responsible for doing their individual fair share of work, and 3) accepting mutual accountability for the ultimate outcome of their efforts. This year’s award went to two teams:

• Aptima’s Patent team

Rachel Burriss, Jonathan Leach, Tasia Rechisky, John Feeney, Sylvain Bruni, Bob McCormack, Jay Brooks, Tom McKenna, Webb Stacy, Mike Knapp, Kara Orvis, Samantha Perry, Evan Oster

• JAIC Team
  Andrew Naber, Werner Born, Topher Marshall, Brandon Harpold, Adam Fouse, Shawn Weil

Outstanding Initiative

Recognizing Aptima employees who pro-actively develop and successfully implement a new idea, this year’s Outstanding Initiative Award went to two teams.

• Proposals Comm Site
  Ellen Kalin
• RMF Package Submission and Secure Processing upgrade for FL office
  Joel D’Arrigo, Lisa Deming, Dolly Hight, Dan Lecours, Ken Garrison, Jiancarlo Villa, Brent Fegley, Jason Hall, Evan Oster, Janet Spruill, Michael Knapp, Thomas McKenna, and Jeff Myers

Best Technical Achievement

This Award recognizes excellence in research and development by an Aptima employee, or a group of employees, within the structure of ongoing projects. The 2021 awardee was the Measures of Discourse IR&D Team: Louis Penafiel, Deirdre Kelliher, Bob McCormack, Nathan Schurr, and Laura Cassani.

Innovative Patent Application

The Innovative Patent Application Award recognizes excellence in research and development by an employee or a group of employees by acknowledging outstanding innovative inventions developed at Aptima. The 2021 awardee was the patent application for Alfred The Butler from inventors Sylvain Bruni, Lisa Lucia, and former Aptimist Patrick Cummings.