Leadership

Kevin most recently served as President of BigBear.ai, where he led teams offering cutting edge computer vision, simulation and modeling, with digital identity tools to support customers critical security and operational decisions. Kevin co-founded and led Pangiam as CEO and Chair of the Board until its acquisition by BigBear.ai, developing cutting edge biometric and AI products for security applications, for both government agencies and commercial customers.

Kevin brings experience from almost two decades of leadership in the U.S. Government to his role. He was the first career civil servant to be appointed and confirmed as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 2018, and he served most recently as Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under President Donald Trump, where he led over 240,000 employees and oversaw operations at CBP, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the U.S. Coast Guard, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Secret Service, and others.

His past experiences include implementing innovations to the U.S. international arrival and departure process, developing comprehensive counterterrorism and risk management strategies, and overseeing the implementation of the U.S. government’s single window for international trade, a project that spanned over 4-dozen agencies. Kevin received several awards for his service and leadership including a Presidential Rank Award—the nation’s highest civil service award, a Service to America Medal, and multiple awards from travel and trade industry groups.

Theodore Tanner Jr. is the Chief Technology Officer at BigBear.ai. Tanner has more than 30 years of experience, most recently serving as CTO and Chief Architect at IBM Watson Health, now Merative. Tanner also has held architect positions at both Apple and Microsoft, and has co-founded several acquired startups, including most recently PokitDok Inc., acquired by Change Health. He also created one of the first machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) as a Service companies on Amazon AWS called BeliefNetworks. Tanner is on the Industry Advisory Board (IAB) for the University of South Carolina Computer Science Department and the Center for Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning at the University of Tennessee, and is also an industry member of the Association For Computing Machinery. Tanner is a published author, and holds several patents in the areas of blockchain, semantics, machine learning, signal processing and signal protection.

Carolyn Blankenship provides strategic input to drive BigBear.ai's growth and long-term success. Carolyn has over 30 years' experience advising companies on achieving business objectives in an emerging technology environment. She joined BigBear.ai from Thomson Reuters, where she worked since 2001 and was mostly recently General Counsel, Product & Innovation. Carolyn's practice has focused on various legal aspects of artificial intelligence, and she has lectured on this subject at Princeton, Penn Law and the Practicing Law Institute, among others. She is also an Observer to the Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI). Carolyn earned her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her J.D. from the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

Carl Napoletano previously served as Vice President of Special Projects at BigBear.ai, where he led the integration of major acquisitions, including Pangiam. Previously, he led BigBear.ai’s portfolio of critical decision support solutions, serving over 300,000 users across the U.S. Army and various government agencies. Prior to joining BigBear.ai, Carl served as Principal and Senior Vice President at ProModel Corporation, leading the development of mission-critical decision support solutions for the Department of Defense, and in 2020, he led the acquisition of ProModel Government Solutions by BigBear.ai. He also previously held leadership positions in Engineering and New Business Development at General Dynamics Electric Boat, focusing on delivering combat systems for nuclear submarines. Carl earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Julie Peffer previously served as the Chief Financial Officer for MedeAnalytics, a healthcare analytics company, since January 2021. Prior to joining MedeAnalytics, she served as Vice President, Finance at Amazon for Amazon Web Services, where she built and led global finance operations in support of all customer-facing teams (Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support). Ms. Peffer held various financial executive leadership positions across multiple industries (Defense, Aerospace, Industrial Manufacturing, Software, Multi-Industry companies) with global strategic and operational expertise. She has successfully implemented strategies, initiatives, systems and solutions that drive and support employee development, organizational change, performance excellence and revenue growth including expertise in Six Sigma DMAIC and Lean. Prior to Amazon, Ms. Peffer was VP, Finance at Flowserve within the Flow Control Division with manufacturing operations in 25 countries, and previous to that she was at Raytheon Space & Airborne Systems, where she worked as CFO for the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance business which included operations in the US, Germany and the UK. She has also held senior leadership positions at ITT, Lennox International, Textron, Sterling Software and Texas Instruments. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Finance and Management from Texas Tech University and her MBA from Baker University.

Sean Ricker is the Chief Accounting Officer at BigBear.ai.  In this role, he leads the organization's accounting, finance, and systems functions. Sean brings extensive experience partnering with executive management to develop and deploy financial strategies that strengthen BigBear.ai’s financial position, improve performance, and expand into new areas. Prior to joining BigBear.ai, he served in accounting and reporting roles at Lockheed Martin Corporation and is a certified public accountant.