Elliott says some of that growth has come from contracts to provide everything from help-desk support to database administration to the U.S. Department of Transportation. That agency is the fastest-growing revenue source for the firm, but Arrowhead still gets about 75 percent to 80 percent of its business from defense contracts.

Arrowhead has installed satellite ground stations for the military at remote locations throughout the world, including a site in Bosnia to establish communications before U.S. troops arrived. The company also recently completed a satellite communications network to provide Internet connections for schools on American Indian reservations. It's working on a year 2000 project, and it conducts computer-based training for a variety of clients.

Founded in 1991, Arrowhead has expanded from the basement of Elliott's Germantown, Md., home to its current headquarters in Falls Church, where it employs 50 people. But the company remains a clear reflection of Elliott's personality.

"Mary Ann Elliott comes across as a good, hard-working person who believes in doing business just about as well as it can be done," says Col. Bill Powell, who runs a division of the U.S. Space Command that looks for ways the military can share technology with civilian government agencies and the private sector. "She's also good at networking."

Powell tells of Elliott's efforts to help him make connections by inviting him to a private-sector conference on satellite communications in Washington in February. "I didn't know about the event until she told me, but by the time she got through, I was on the agenda as one of the conference speakers."

Last August, Defense Daily magazine chose Elliott as one of the 40 most influential people involved in defense, aerospace and national security. She was one of only two women in that group. The other was Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

"Mary Ann is an extremely forceful person, but in a business that demands it," says Tom Breen, a media consultant for the aerospace and defense industries who oversaw development of the Defense Daily list. "Yet, at the same time, she is very kind-hearted. She has spent 20 years becoming an expert in satellite technology, and now she is pretty comfortable sitting down in the Pentagon with three stars and four stars."

Elliott is a native of Robeson County, N.C., a community with a large population of American Indians and one of the poorest economies in the state. She dropped out of school in the eighth grade and married at 14. Her husband died when she was 32, and to provide for herself and her three children, Elliott took a job with Motorola in Hampton Roads as the company's first woman sales representative.

After learning all she could about "the traditional terrestrial wireless market," Elliott was eager to go out on her own. She named her new company Arrowhead to honor her heritage, and the turning point came when AT&T officials asked her to team up with them on a big government contract involving satellite communications.

"As we've grown, we've carefully selected very skilled and senior level people who share our values and concern for quality," Elliott says. "We know that every day, the thing that makes us money walks in and out the door, so we make sure our people know we appreciate their value to the company."