VA OIT Portfolio/Program Manager exits, takes Senior Health Operations role with Halfaker

“Halfaker and Associates, LLC (Halfaker), a technology solutions provider within the Federal Government’s health, intelligence, defense, and security sectors, is pleased to announce Katrina Tuisamatatele as Deputy Executive Vice President, Health Operations. In her role, Ms. Tuisamatatele is responsible for supporting the successful execution of all projects across the Health division. She brings more than 25 years’ experience in Federal and Private sector markets with a focus on applying IT and lean process engineering to improve decision making and deliver intuitive and powerful products/solutions.” 

“Ms. Tuisamatatele joins Halfaker following a 12+ year tenure at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Information & Technology (OI&T). Most recently, she served as the Director of the Health Portfolio, where she led and managed the IT planning and execution of health projects – including three sub-portfolios, nine product lines, and two product offices – to provide Veterans and staff with improved health services. Among her many accomplishments at the VA, Ms. Tuisamatatele helped position OI&T to meet the VA’s current and future state information technology needs to support the implementation of a Community Care Network of Providers. Prior to her role as Health Portfolio Director, Ms. Tuisamatatele served as the Community Care Portfolio Manager, in which she led all IT planning efforts of over forty projects across multiple portfolios, ensuring the continuous improvement of the Veteran experience. “

“I am pleased to welcome Katrina to the team,” said Dawn Halfaker, President and CEO for Halfaker. Her unique blend of technology, healthcare and leadership experience will strengthen our Health portfolio and enhance our ability to deliver critical healthcare IT services and solutions to all Americans, including our military service members and Veterans.” 

“I am honored to join Halfaker and Associates, Katrina commented. “My passion lies in transforming healthcare IT delivery and I am thrilled to leverage my experience to support Halfaker’s vision to ‘Continue to Serve.’” 

“Halfaker’s Health Portfolio includes programs across the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Defense Health Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Company recently celebrated two VA programs that were awarded FedHealthIT Disruptive Technology Awards for their use of disruptive technology to improve mission delivery.” 

G2X TAKE: Looking to leverage Katrina Tuisamatatele’s over 23 years of hands-on development and management of software applications experience, this fast-growing Service-Disabled Veteran and Woman-Owned consultancy, and major partner to VA, has recruited a new Deputy Executive VP of Health Operations.  

Katrina brings to the role extensive experience in leading dispersed teams in building and managing software, to include having managed teams from 2 to 1000+ as a portfolio and program manager.  

Prior roles include: 

• OIT Portfolio/Program Manager – Department of Veterans Affairs 
• Management and Program Analyst – Veterans Health Administration 
• Special Agent – Federal Bureau of Investigation 

Take Bytes  

• We should note that Amanda Axsom, Chief Development Officer for Halfaker and Associates will be recognized today as an honoree at the Leading for Impact: Women in Leadership Conference. More here.
• A recently announced 5-year Program Integrity Tool DevOps task award to Halfaker in support of Veterans Affairs builds on a string of notable and large wins in the last year or two in support of the Agency, to include a $189M VA Enterprise Services Integrated Platform (ESIP) Support task; an $88M VA Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Transactions Application Suite (TAS) support task; a $244M VA Veteran Signals (VSignals) task award; and a $164M VA Financial Service Center (FSC) IT Service task award.   
• Halfaker has made several key investments over the course of the past few years to position them for the long term, to include adding former MHS EHR Acquisition Leader, Jessica Denman as Executive Vice President of Health Operations; Ken Georgi as Chief Operating Officer; well-known Federal Health Industry leader Tony Meyer as Vice President of Business Development; veteran strategy and growth leader Jerry Ambrosh as Chief Strategy & Growth Officer; and 20-year industry veteran Bob Spitz as Chief Technology Officer.  
• Earlier this summer, Halfaker and &Partners announced they had formed an 8(a) SDVOSB Joint Venture focused on transformative digital services. This was Halfaker’s second Mentor-Protégé relationship and JV, demonstrating the firm’s commitment to helping build the next generation of small business Government contractors. More here.  
• With a senior leadership team in place who bring a proven track record of winning, and a Prime position on nearly every major Federal Health contract vehicle (CMS SPARC, CIO-SP3 SB, VETS 2, etc.), to include having recently added an 8(a) position on the CIO-SP3 SB On-Ramp, Halfaker continues to be one of the most well-positioned firms in the Federal Health market today.   
• Halfaker was recently named to the updated list of the NXT UP firms poised to make big waves in the Federal sector in 2020 and for years to come and the VA Profile program they support was recently named as one of the FHIT 2020 Disruptive Tech Awardees.  
• Included here is a recent interview with Halfaker President and CEO Dawn Halfaker, recently recognized as one of the FedHealthIT100, where she discusses her firm’s success and what is at the heart of her mission. Read the interview here.  

Included below is a snapshot of Prime obligations for Halfaker across the Federal sector.  

Federal contracting data provided to G2Xchange by Federal Compass; Date: October 2020