The 100 leaders named to the Wash100 every year by premier government contracting events and media company Executive Mosaic are all renowned members of the federal services ecosystem. But only one from the annual roster can be named the most popular, as determined by audience vote.
Every January since 2014, EM has rolled out its selections for the most influential future and present leaders of the GovCon community, which are compiled with the help of your submissions and nominations. They include decorated military leaders, savvy innovators, acquisition experts and more. Then, for the first quarter of the year, our esteemed audience has the chance to vote on their most beloved winners from the list and, at the beginning of May, a victor is announced.
Browse below the last five winners of the Wash100 popular vote contest!
Learn more about the Wash100’s history, stretching over a decade, and nominate a candidate for 2025’s award.
Scott McIntyre
2020 Winner
Scott McIntyre clinched the Wash100 popular vote contest at the top of the decade, two years into successfully spinning out the public sector practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers into the multi-billion dollar Guidehouse enterprise. McIntyre is the fearless leader of the consultancy, which provides its services to a range of markets, including government, healthcare, energy, finance and more.
McIntyre was at BearingPoint and PwC for over a decade each prior to his current nearly seven-year stint running Guidehouse, so he’s something of a fixture in the consulting world. He has won a staggering eight Wash100 Awards and regularly makes waves in the contracting sphere with wins like the company’s $12 billion follow-on award from the U.S. Air Force in February for systems engineering and integration support for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Read McIntyre’s Wash100 profiles: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Stacey Dixon
2021 Winner
Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Dr. Stacey Dixon was the first public sector winner of the Wash100 popular vote contest, in 2021. Prior to ODNI, she spent time at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as deputy director, directed the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency and was a staff member at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
She began her career at the CIA—her roots are in the intelligence community and the GovCon community warmly recognized her decades of service with her popular vote win. The accomplished government official was in her NGA deputy director role when she earned the distinction. Dr. Dixon has been on the Wash100 list for five consecutive years since 2020.
Read Dixon’s Wash100 profiles: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Are you passionate about a member of the GovCon community and believe strongly in their impact on the market? Nominate them for the 2025 Wash100!
Lauren Knausenberger
2022 Winner
The beloved Lauren Knausenberger was chief information officer of the Department of the Air Force when she was crowned the most popular GovCon executive of 2022. It’s likely that Knausenberger commands such respect in the industry because she has public and private sector experience — she spent over a decade at CACI, was a director at the Air Force’s technology incubator AFWERX and, after six years at DAF, became chief innovation officer at SAIC in Sept. 2023. She knows the ropes — and has succeeded greatly — on both sides of the equation.
Knausenberger is a three-time Wash100 winner; she was awarded in 2021, 2022 and 2023 and her expertise spans intelligence, defense and civilian and she’s a natural leader.
Read Knausenberger’s Wash100 profiles: 2021, 2022, 2023
Lloyd Austin
2023 Winner
In 2023, the GovCon community chose then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as their favorite of that year’s Wash100 class. Sworn into office in early 2021, Austin steered the Department of Defense from a focus on the war on terror into the great power competition era with assuredness, while keeping an eye on urgent conflicts bubbling up in Ukraine and in occupied Palestine. With an annual budget of over $800 billion, the DOD drives so much of the GovCon market, and Austin spent four years at the helm of that massive business-generation machine, so it’s no wonder the contracting world views him with adoration.
Like Knausenberger, he was recognized with three consecutive Wash100 Awards from 2021–2023.
Read Austin’s Wash100 profiles: 2021, 2022, 2023
Judi Dotson
2024 Winner
In contrast to executives who flit around from company to company, Judi Dotson has remained loyal to Booz Allen Hamilton for her entire 35-year career. This kind of dedication is no doubt a huge asset in the popular vote contest, gaining the support of peers at Booz and competitors elsewhere alike. Today (and when she won in 2024), Dotson holds the position of president of BAH’s global defense business, which is a multi-billion-dollar effort with thousands of team members. For her trouble, Dotson is the first Wash100 recipient ever to receive over 1,000 votes for the community in the popular race.
Due to Dotson’s leadership, Booz Allen is currently working under a potential $919 million DOD task order performing engineering, development, integration and technological work for the soldier-as-a-system initiative. This is just one of the many endeavors she has spearheaded.
