Charles Sills - COO

Charles Sills is a recognized authority on U.S. Government Contracting, and an advocate for Small Business access to Federal and Military contracting opportunities, serving as a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Council; an observer to the White House-sponsored Inter-Agency Task Force on Veterans Business Development; and a member of VET-Force (Veterans Entrepreneurship Task Force). He has helped moderate the Army, Navy and Air Force Contracting Summits in Jacksonville, Norfolk Naval Base, Ft. Hood, Texas and Eglin Air Force Base for the Defense Leadership Forum; keynoted the Veterans Day Panel on "Wartime and Worldwide Government Contracting" at the Mt. Vernon Chamber’s forum on "Winning Army Contracts – from Ft. Belvoir to Afghanistan"; and was commended by the Small Business Affairs Director, U.S. Army, for the "overwhelming response" to his presentation on the "Marketing to Prime Contractors" Panel at the National Veteran Small Business Conference.

He is President of FED/Contracting LLC, a Washington DC-based consultancy that assists U.S. Small Businesses, as well as overseas firms and their American affiliates, in accessing Government acquisition programs; helps Prime Contractors qualify Veteran, Minority and Woman-owned vendors as teammates for project opportunities with mandated Diversity Supplier content; and brings Small Businesses and Fortune 1000 corporations together under Government Agency ‘Mentor-Protégé’ partnerships. Based on the U.S. Defense Dept. Mentor-Protégé program that he managed for Trillacorpe Construction, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, the company was awarded the prestigious 2010 Defense Dept. Nunn-Perry Award for "superior performance in the areas of business growth and return on investment, Government contracting, technical performance and quality management".

Mr. Sills is a former Naval Intelligence Officer who served in a succession of National Security positions in the Pentagon, including the National Military Intelligence Center and the Defense Intelligence Agency/Worldwide Estimates Directorate (Deputy Director), following assignments on the staff of the U.S. Middle East Force Command (based in Bahrain with responsibility for the Persian Gulf/Red Sea/Indian Ocean area), and the Geopolitical Briefing & Analysis Division, Supreme Allied Commander NATO/Atlantic. He received numerous commendations for his contributions to Defense Dept. crisis teams and special reports, including a series of briefings to Members of Congress on the findings of “Project Provodnik” which he directed, a comprehensive re-thinking of Soviet conventional and strategic military capabilities as well as the effectiveness of their projection of ‘soft’ power throughout the Developing World. He was recently appointed Sr. Advisor, Global Partnerships Development for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, mandated by the U.S. Congress, which is developing conflict resolution and regional stabilization and security initiatives based on Eisenhower’s legacy as NATO’s first Supreme Allied Commander.

Mr. Sills also has extensive experience planning and directing international industrial, infrastructure, environmental and energy initiatives, having served as a member of the Danube Task Force, the governing council that ran the Danube Basin Environmental Restoration Program led by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development and the UN Development Program, involving 13 countries from Austria to Moldova. He also served on the Japan-U.S. Joint Fund for Social & Economic Development in Central/Eastern Europe; the Helsinki Commission focused on the environmental clean-up of the Baltic Sea; the Kaliningrad Defense Conversion Initiative which sought to transform Soviet weapons factories into consumer product manufacturing; and the NGO Delegation to NAFTA, where he helped draft the Environmental Supplements. And he was responsible for securing major funding support for the Smithsonian Institute's biodiversity preservation/cancer cure research program in Brazil's Amazon region; for the Sassari, Sardinia symposium on ozone depletion organized by the International Council of Scientific Unions, which led directly to the Montreal Protocol which has been successful in mitigating/reducing the ‘Ozone Hole’; and for the White House Presidential Awards program sponsored by the President's Council on Sustainable Development.

Mr. Sills led the Martin Marietta Aerospace (now Lockheed Martin) team that won the contract for and installed the world’s largest (at that time) solar photovoltaic energy installation, under a pilot program co-funded by the U.S. and Saudi Arabian Governments; researched and wrote a worldwide, country-by-country survey of renewable energy technologies and commercialization opportunities; and testified before Congress on the need for pro-active U.S. Government support for advanced renewable energy R&D and demonstration programs. Currently, he serves on both the Defense & Security Advisory Committee and the International Advisory Committee for the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE); on the International Committee of the DC Chamber of Commerce; and on the International Advisory Committee of the National Council on US-Arab Relations (NCUSAR).

He also serves as a Board Member and Advisor on International Security, Energy and Environment for the Eurasia Center/Eurasian Business Coalition, where he has planned and moderated conferences on “Doing Business with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)”, and “Transforming a Continent: Energy and Infrastructure Investment Opportunities on the New Silk Road”. In that capacity, he was designated one of only five or six U.S. delegates to the annual Moscow Conference on International Security in 2015, 2016 and 2017 – involving approx. 900 delegates and 40-plus Defense Ministers focused on implementing cooperative programs to contain and defeat worldwide terrorism.

Mr. Sills’ education includes an M.A. in Defense & Foreign Policy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts and Harvard Universities); and an A.B., Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a graduate of Collegiate School in New York City, the U.S.’s 2nd oldest school founded in New Amsterdam in 1628.