Meet Bixal’s new Senior Vice President of Consulting Services, Malcolm Harden

When a leader with a portfolio that includes titles such as Chief Growth Officer, Federal Partnerships Leader, VP of Innovation Programs and of Strategic Operations joins a growing WOSB with not one but two recent JVs, and admission into the Digital WOSB Alliance, on top of recent awards with HUD and GSA, we take notice. Here we connect with Bixal’s new Senior Vice President of Consulting Services, Malcolm Harden to find out more.

Why the move to Bixal?  

After 30+ years delivering and partnering across IT consulting, you come to recognize what doesn’t work, what works, and what has the potential to be game-changing. Bixal is the latter – it’s operating model almost seems like a market disruptor. The full organization works together like a finely tuned machine, and they’ve already unlocked the ability to deliver well both for CIO offices and for program offices. I could not pass up the opportunity to work with this team at this point in their growth.

What is it about the company you are excited about?  

Bixal is heavily motivated by a desire to expand its impact across missions. When you discuss this with our founders, you come to understand just how sincere they are. Delivering our best for clients and for the public drives financial success for the business, not the other way around. You would be surprised how this approach, executed with sincerity, changes the nature of our internal conversations about everything from people and culture to proposal pricing.

What does your addition mean for Bixal in terms of future strategies/ plans?  

I share Bixal’s passion for succeeding for federal clients and the public at large. The company knows how to understand a client’s challenge and tackle it in a way that shows both an appreciation for and an attention to the things that can go wrong. I’ve always operated this way, and at Bixal I’ll help scale this model and deliver bigger, broader impact without a loss of quality in the five core disciplines we work on: people, processes, technology, data, and content. We’ll cultivate more conversation across missions that we don’t presently serve and offer more opportunities for the government to enjoy the process of creating change and delighting the public with digital solutions and services that elevate their customer experience.

Are there any industry/agency trends you have experienced recently that will drive additional perspective for Bixal and its partners?

It’s almost cliché to answer “AI” at this point, but how could you not? Most of the focus to date has been on how to automate simple and mundane tasks, and that makes sense. But there are broader goals that will start to come into focus. We situate our AI & data engineering professionals close to our subject matter experts in government programs, such that the insights we discover within government program data can inform the AI models we build to support our efforts. We are working with like-minded companies and experts in federal mission areas to make sure that our investments in AI accelerate federal mission outcomes, not just automate the administrivia. No offense to administrivia!

Business today seems to be all about partners. Who do you want reaching out to you – both in a general sense and perhaps from the lens of kinds of companies you have worked with in the past and would like to again? What does the partner view look like for Bixal?
One of my favorite things about Bixal is our natural orientation towards collaboration. From Digital Services Coalition (DSC) to American Council for Technology -Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), we are committed to working with other organizations within the U.S. Federal ecosystem. I can tell you from personal experience – not all companies know how to partner. Small and mid-sized businesses understand more quickly now when a prime contractor just wants to put you on their team so that they can win, and you, as the subcontractor, will never get a meaningful opportunity to help the client succeed. Recall my earlier statement about Bixal’s passion about making an impact for the client. There’s no point in us joining a team where we won’t have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact for the customer, even when we win. I’ve met so many people and companies in this ecosystem that share those values, and Bixal is thrilled to go-to-market with like-minded companies.

Is there anything else you would like people to know?

Those that know Bixal realize we’re one of the best kept secrets in the federal space. For those who don’t know us, give me a shout. We love to help like-minded companies deliver and succeed.

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