The 2006 Virginia 100 - Focusing on the big picture
Entrepreneuer Rodney Hunt creates a diverse work force at technology services company

by Joan Tuppance
Virginia Business
June 2006

It didn’t take long for Rodney Hunt to settle into the role of entrepreneur. The summer he turned 14, Hunt started a lawn-cutting business in his hometown of Fort Washington, Md., with the simple goal of earning extra cash. Within a month 70 customers had signed on, and Hunt was hiring school friends to keep up with the cutting.

“That’s when I realized I was good at marketing,” he says. “That business yielded $2 million in gross revenues over a four-year period. I used my money to buy my parents a car and to help with college.”

Today, Hunt, 45, still hustles to serve clients as president and CEO of RS Information Systems Inc., (RSIS), a McLean technology services company he co-founded in 1992 as a part-time venture. In March 1993, with a $5,000 investment, the company began full-time operations and generated $327,000 in revenue the first year. By 2005, revenues stood at more than $365 million, and Hunt expects that figure to rise to $400 million this year.

So what’s the secret behind his Midas touch? How did a small startup IT government contractor not only survive in Washington’s competitive marketplace, but earn awards and a spot on many of Northern Virginia’s lists of fastest-growing technology companies? “We continue to prosper because we look at the big picture,” says Hunt.

For Hunt, the big picture means a conscious effort to hire a diverse work force, to mentor small businesses (by bringing them on as contractors) and to offer an innovative package of engineering and technology services along with good customer service. “Our clients have fiduciary responsibility to take [tax] dollars and deliver an end item,” he explains. “We can help them speed up that process. They appreciate the fact that we can help them, and they give us follow-up business.”

Through the years, Hunt has built RSIS into the 15th-largest African-American service company in the country and the largest minority-owned contractor in the Washington, D.C.-Virginia region. With 30 offices around the United States, the company employs more than 2,000 people. Women and minorities make up 60 percent of Hunt’s employees, and they’re extremely loyal: the company’s employee retention rate is more than 90 percent.
Looking back, Hunt says his career could have taken a different path. His father played baseball for the Negro Leagues for a year and Hunt, a pitcher in high school, shared the same passion for the sport. “This was a way for me to connect with my dad.”

At 16, Hunt was torn between three careers — business, engineering and baseball. After high school, a major league team drafted him to play in its minor league system, but Hunt declined the offer. “My parents talked me into going to college,” he says. Hunt received a dual bachelor of science degree in operations research and industrial engineering from George Washington University. After college, he played ball for the Washington Black Sox, a minor league industrial team, and worked as a systems engineer during the off-season. His athletic career ended 4½ years later when he tore a rotator cuff.

Before starting RSIS, Hunt worked as a senior associate for large government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. His background in systems engineering, information management and business development was the perfect breeding ground for RSIS. “I wanted to start my own company,” he says. “I thought we could develop a company where we could take the best of management consulting and the best of information services providers and combine them…”

Hunt likes to feel that his company makes a difference. He points to the scientists and engineers in the company’s climate prediction group who have been hired by the National Weather Service and tasked to the Air Force to help predict the weather in Iraq. “Our staff believes in what we are doing, and that’s exciting to me.”