Guerra cancels retirement, named president of Unissant

There will be no rocking chair for Robert Guerra, who has come out of retirement to become president and chief strategy officer of Unissant, a small business IT contractor.

Guerra is best known for the consulting and board work he has done in recent years helping many companies manage their growth and success in the federal market.

In fact, his work with Unissant started off as a consulting job. Guerra also had retired after one of the companies he worked with as board member, Agilex, was sold.

“My biggest failure is retirement,” he joked in an email.

Guerra said he was partially retired when he began consulting with Unissant and its chairman and CEO Manish Malhotra.

He helped develop a plan for the company to exit the small business arena by tripling in size over the next three to five years. “Small businesses that do not properly prepare for that transition (from small to full-and-open competition) often fail in the long run,” he said.

As they developed their strategy, Malhortra and Guerra decided that he needed to take on a more structured and defined role. So, Guerra has gone from semi-retired to fully employed.

“I will take on all operational responsibilities for the company’s growth, process discipline and leadership,” he said.

“We’re thrilled to have Rob Guerra join Unissant in this critical leadership role as we embrace the next phase of our evolution,” Malhotra said in a press release.

The strategy Malhotra and Guerra have developed starts with an emphasis on opportunity identification, and qualification of opportunities fitting the company’s main competencies such as data analytics, agile engineering and management consulting.

To drive growth, they are bringing on senior business development and capture leaders, Guerra said.

Next up is to address the company’s overall organization and operations infrastructure, he said.

Guerra said he has been involved in several startups and one company turnaround during his career. Unissant is neither.

“Unissant is a solid company,” Guerra said. “Manish is a very bright, imaginative leader and we really seem to have found common ground in complimenting one another’s skills.”

Before Unissant, Guerra was most recently a founding board member of Agilex, which was sold to Accenture last year. He also has been executive vice president of Sysorex Information systems, a vice president at Falcon Micro Systems and was president of Everex Federal Systems.

In addition to his work at individual companies, Guerra is probably as well known for his work in the government IT community, including founding the Industry Advisory Council and the Bethesda, Md./NIH chapter of AFCEA, where he current serves on the board.

He also has chaired the NIH Children’s Inn Gala, which has raised $2.8 million to support families and children who stay at the inn while undergoing treatment at NIH.  Other community work includes serving on the board of the Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter.

Guerra has won six Federal 100 awards given by our sister publication FCW. He holds the record for most wins by a private sector executive.