Leadership Team
Executive Management
Matt Ernst (left) is the chief executive officer. Mike Hurt (middle) is chief operating officer, and Mike Lambert is chief marketing officer.
Matthew Ernst - Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Ernst co-founded Amentra in early 2000 to provide an innovative mentoring approach to technology and business solutions consulting. This approach has helped Amentra's clients improve ROI for their technology and business investments, enhance staff skills and rapidly respond to changing business needs and challenges.
Mr. Ernst, the 2007 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of Virginia and Washington DC sets the tone for company values, ethics and culture. He focuses on building a results-oriented business environment, developing long term client partnerships and creating career opportunities for Amentra employees. Under his guidance and leadership, Amentra has become one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the country.
Prior to joining Amentra, Mr. Ernst held senior management positions for a major consulting company, including practice management, business analysis, HR/Recruiting mgmt, and sales management. He spear-headed one of their fastest growing and most profitable project solutions groups, resulting in a multi-million dollar organization.
In these roles, Mr. Ernst witnessed gross shortcomings in both project outsourcing and consulting staff augmentation. Both of these common IT consulting practices left businesses with undesirable results, cost overruns, and difficult production transitions. Worse yet, clients were unable to support their new IT investment. Mr. Ernst felt that these failures were unnecessary and set out to create a "better mousetrap" for IT consulting.
Rather than the typical "us versus them" mentality, Mr. Ernst created a new model for consulting in which the client's staff would be a stakeholder in the process, eliminating the knowledge transfer gap created by both traditional pure project outsourcing/consulting staff augmentation. This innovative business model helped organizations upgrade their technology and their staff skills simultaneously. As an added benefit, clients also report increases in staff retention and morale.
Throughout his career, Mr. Ernst has been known for his entrepreneurial spirit, business vision, work ethic, staff empowerment, and commitment to unparalleled customer service.
Michael Hurt - Chief Operations Officer
Mr. Hurt is responsible for creating and managing Amentra's best-in-class customer service. One of Amentra's first employees, Mr. Hurt joined the company in August of 2000. He has been highly instrumental in developing Amentra's culture, leadership and best-in-class service delivery offerings. He built Amentra's project solutions organization from the ground floor, executing core process throughout the organization, developing vertical industry practices and formulating key client partnerships.
He previously served in various capacities for a subsidiary of Tyco International as a Sr. Manager in large scale business operations for commercial and government clients. Most recently, Mr. Hurt and two other executives were responsible for founding the multi-million dollar Total Plant Deactivation division within the company, where he led the quality management process, IT and systems development, accounting, program and project management.
Throughout his career, he has been known for his business vision and reputation as a solid leader and mentor for those on his team.
Michael Lambert, Jr. - Chief Marketing Officer and E.V.P., Sales
Mr. Lambert leads Amentra's sales and marketing organization and is responsible for leading the sales team, spearheading sales efforts in new regions, forming and maintaining key industry partnerships, and managing public relations and marketing efforts. He joined Amentra in April of 2001 tasked with formulating and building Amentra's overall sales and marketing capabilities - a daunting challenge given the economic conditions at that time.
Mr. Lambert is responsible for developing long-term client relationships in new markets, forming solid partnerships with leading software providers and generating enviable coverage by industry leading organizations, ranging from major publications to analyst firms. Prior to joining Amentra, Mr. Lambert managed sales and marketing for various software and professional services organizations where he was continually ranked as a top producer for each company.
He is known not only for his excellent performance in sales, but for his passion in envisioning and implementing highly effective marketing and public relations programs.
Operations Vice Presidents
Brian Carothers - V.P., Operations - Southeast and Midwest
Mr. Carothers serves as a Vice President of Operations within Amentra's Southeast and Midwest regions and is located in Amentra's Tampa headquarters. Over the past decade, he has become a leader within the consulting industry in helping clients within the Retail, Healthcare, and Insurance industries. An Amentra employee since early 2002, Mr. Carothers leads Amentra's data strategy practice and has been responsible for driving the overall creation and adoption of the processes and controls within this practice. He also serves as Amentra's open source practice lead and, as such, helps to drive Amentra's open source strategy and partnership approach to leverage these open source technologies and processes to assist Amentra's clients.
Mr. Carothers earned a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University.
John Espey - V.P., Operations - Richmond and Carolinas
Mr. Espey is the Vice President of Operations within Amentra's Richmond and Carolina regions and is located in Amentra's Charlotte, NC office. He joined the company in March of 2003 and has unequalled experience in the Retail, Telecom, Financial, and Energy verticals. Over the past decade, Mr. Espey has been responsible for designing enterprise level business processes and building enterprise-class applications on a variety of platforms with a heavy focus on enterprise integration and SOA. Mr. Espey has given numerous lectures and conducted mentoring sessions covering a broad range of topics related to the IT field at George Mason University and at Clarkson University at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. He has earned a reputation as an innovator and early adopter of emerging frameworks, technology trends, and methodologies, and has a history of successfully applying these on his projects to drive maximum value for the customer.
Mr. Espey has a B.S. in Decision Sciences/Management Information Systems and a minor in Accounting from George Mason University.
Jason Evans - V.P., Operations - Northeast
Mr. Evans serves as a Vice President of Operations within Amentra's Northeast region and is located in Amentra's Philadelphia office. Mr. Evans joined the organization in 2002 and during his tenure at Amentra, he has been a key element in the development and solidification of Amentra's Telecommunications and Pharmaceuticals verticals with an emerging focus in the Retail and Financial marketplaces. Mr. Evans brings a vast amount of experience in full life cycle business process and application development including Business Process Management (BPM). He has been a leader in helping to develop and refine Amentra's overall process around BPM and establishing these practice areas within the company. Mr. Evans has a unique blend of technical expertise and business experience in a wide range of industries. He is known as an expert within the Telecommunications and Financial field where he has helped many organizations to develop end to end processes within well established and new product / service offerings.
Mr. Evans graduated with a Bachelors in Computer Science from Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, with a dual minor in Business Computer Information Systems and Political Science.
Jason Smith - V.P., Operations - DC Metro
Mr. Smith serves as a Vice President of Operations within Amentra's DC Metro region and is located in Amentra's Reston, VA office. Since joining the company in August of 2001, he has contributed his unequalled experience in the Telecommunications, Financial, Pharmaceutical, Retail and Non-profit marketplaces. Mr. Smith has over a decade of consulting experience leading teams through Business Process Management (BPM) and full life cycle development of custom enterprise scale mission critical systems using a variety of processes, technologies, and programming languages. He has been a trendsetter by working to develop Amentra's Telecommunications practice where he has helped many clients transform their businesses by launching them into new markets like VoIP, Wireless, Broadband services, etc. He is known as an expert within the Telecommunications field and continues to help Amentra's clients innovate in this area.
Mr. Smith has a B.S. in Management Science and Information Technology from Virginia Tech.
Chris Wood - V.P., Operations - DC Metro
Mr. Wood is a Vice President of Operations within Amentra's DC Metro region and is located in Amentra's Reston, VA office. He joined the company in September of 2001 and contributes significant expertise in the Insurance, Telecommunications, Financial, Pharmaceuticals, and Healthcare markets. Over the past several years, Mr. Wood has led teams through the full life cycle development of custom enterprise-level mission critical systems using a variety of processes, technologies, and programming languages. He has been a key contributor in developing Amentra's overall System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and leads the technology implementation committees within Amentra. Mr. Wood has also overseen and guided much of the company's work with and approach to SOA. He is known for his specific expertise within the Insurance and Pharmaceuticals markets and has helped many clients within these areas achieve significant results through his targeted process and system design expertise.
Mr. Wood holds a B.A. in Mathematics and in Cognitive Science with a Minor in Computer Science from the University of Virginia.
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