| Command decisions
Military background
helps founders calls the shots at ITA
Related
articles:
-
Saving a historic bank
- At Bay Mechanic, founder
steps back following brush with death
- No fancy office
for LandAmerica's CEO
by
Robert Burke
Virginia Business
July
2004
Don Brewster Jr. started working when
he was 8 years old, sweeping floors in his father’s
liquor store in Frederick, Md. When his father bought
a coin laundry a few years later, he rolled quarters
and ran the machines. Long hours after school and on
weekends taught him about “hard work and making
money the old-fashioned way,” he says.
Sounds like good training for a budding
entrepreneur, but Brewster’s lessons weren’t
done. At 18 he entered the United States Military Academy
at West Point for four demanding and exhausting years.
“It changed me completely,” says Brewster,
37. “You figure out how to solve problems. …
Ultimately I think it turned me into a man of action.”
Brewster’s military career ended
more than a decade ago; he left amid a wave of military
downsizing after serving in Desert Shield in Kuwait
and Desert Storm in Iraq. But his military training
shapes the culture of Springfield-based Innovative Technology
Application, the fast-growing tech company that he co-founded
in 1995.
Defense and government IT contracting
is a competitive field but ITA has found its niche in
multimedia training. Its 140-plus employees create CD-based
training using 3D graphics, video and interactive media
to teach soldiers in scores of subjects, from operating
biochemical defense gear to responding to domestic terrorism
attacks. Its growth lately has been explosive, with
revenues rising from about $5.8 million in 2001 to nearly
$25 million last year.
Loyalty is one of Brewster’s core
values. He learned it as a young officer. “You
show loyalty down the chain of command, you’ll
get loyalty back,” he says. ITA’s culture
is disciplined — employees work in a team environment
and at 5 o’clock they go home. For top performers
there are goodies — leased high-performance cars
such as Jaguars and BMWs. “I want to give people
as many reasons as I can to say, ‘Hey, I’d
rather stay at ITA.’”
The practice pays off. During the dot-com
frenzy of the late 1990s, stodgy government contractors
were losing their talented tech workers in droves. Not
Brewster. “I was able to hold onto all my intellectual
talent,” he says.
He’s not a solo performer. ITA’s
senior management is an impressive team. His co-founder
and co-owner is retired Army Col. Nolan Adams, 62, who
was Brewster’s boss at AMA Technologies in Alexandria,
where they worked before launching ITA. Adams, who served
three tours in Vietnam and is a highly decorated veteran,
has a deep background in chemical and biological defense
issues.
The strength of Brewster and Adams’
relationship is evident. Brewster considers Adams his
best friend — he and his wife, Michelle, named
their third child Nolan in his honor. “We really
do balance each other out. He’s older and more
conservative; I’m younger and more energetic.
We’ve really found a great balance.”
Another key member of ITA’s leadership
team is its president, Bert Mizusawa, a 1979 West Point
grad who finished first in his class and holds a masters
in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School
of Government and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School.
Before joining ITA Mizusawa served as the special assistant
to the Secretary of the Army for Interagency and International
Affairs. “He’s a pretty impressive guy,”
Brewster says.
The firsthand knowledge of how the military
works and personal contacts that Brewster and other
ITA execs have is a key part of the firm’s success.
“We can communicate with the military because
we are the military,” Brewster says.
The deep connections that Brewster and
others have with the military also shape the firm’s
long-term strategy. Brewster and Adams have no intention
of selling the firm to a larger company despite the
wave of acquisitions that are sweeping through the defense
IT sector lately. “We have total autonomy…
to pursue those things that are in the best interests
of our customers and ultimately our nation,” Brewster
says.
Brewster’s father was a diplomat
for the U.S. Agency for International Development in
Saigon. His mother is Vietnamese. The family was evacuated
from Saigon in 1975, when South Vietnam fell, and eventually
settled in Maryland. “I truly love the freedom
that America represents, and I understand the importance,
and I want to pay back the United States for what they’ve
done for me and my family.”
He thinks ITA can hit $100 million a
year in revenue, but he won’t rush it. That’s
not the goal he’s after. “I want to get
there with my team intact, with my people feeling good
about where they are,” he says. “I really
feel a moral obligation to my team.”
Return to Virginia Business - July 2004
|
