These days, trust might be hard to come by. How can you trust whether that picture on Instagram is real? Or that your kid’s homework wasn’t finished by ChatGPT? Or that the delivery driver hasn’t taken a bite of your food?
Our hybrid work environment has also introduced a host of trust issues. When employees are at home, managers doubt their productivity, going so far as to install software that tracks what they type into their computers.
But when you sit down with four Washington-area leaders, the word “trust” emerges in each conversation — and in many different ways. One believes when employees feel trusted, they also feel safe and confident. Another person believes she is a CEO because a mentor trusted her early in her career.
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Thanks to the trust nurtured within each of their organizations, it’s no surprise that these leaders were ranked as exemplary in their respective categories based on votes from their employees. The rankings were determined through surveys conducted by Energage.
And no matter how small or large the organization they manage, each would agree that it’s not their title that defines true leadership; it’s the trust.
Sylvia Megret | President and CEO of ACDI/VOCA
Midsize companies (150-499 employees)
You don’t have to be Superman to be a good leader. You just have to be yourself.
Long gone are the days when leaders had to pretend to have all of the solutions, says Sylvia Megret, the CEO of a nonprofit global development organization called ACDI/VOCA. Megret considers authenticity and transparency as the cornerstones of modern leadership.
“You have to be willing to know that you don’t know the answers. You have to be curious,” Megret says. “I think the feminist style of leadership, which men can have as well, is about being vulnerable. It’s a different style than the 1950s.”
Megret is the first female CEO in the organization’s 60-year history. When she first joined the organization as the chief operating officer in 2016, the C-suite was all men. Now, three out of the five leaders are women. “In the past, I don’t think there was a deliberate attempt to not allow women into the C-suite,” Megret says. “If we want to change that, we have to be deliberate.”
Megret says that it’s “absolutely crucial” to build a pipeline for women and minorities to ascend to leadership positions and that the organization is taking steps to increase its diversity among junior employees, too. The number of women in the company has increased by 88 percent since 2016; and the number of minority hires increased by 67 percent from 2016 to 2023.
Megret values open and honest communication with her staff. She encourages her employees to come and talk to her about why certain tough decisions were made. “Not everybody is going to agree with the decisions that we and the leadership team makes, but they can hopefully trust and have more confidence in those decisions if we can articulate why we made those decisions,” Megret says.
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With the help and feedback of her staff, Megret intuited a set of six values that define the organization: passion, insight, respect, resilience, impact and integrity. The values are not just a bunch of nice words written by somebody on a communications team. “These guide everything that we do,” Megret says.
And while some of them might be aspirational, Megret admits, there’s only one that requires absolute excellence: integrity.
Much of the work that ACDI/VOCA does is located in dangerous and harsh environments around the world where resilience is key. Megret says she trusts her leadership and staff to find the best possible solutions for challenges that may arise while directing her efforts toward areas within her control.
“When staff are trusted, they feel safe and they feel confident, and I think they can do their job better. I think that’s really what’s important, particularly in the challenging work that we do,” Megret says.
Mary Pritchard | CEO of Cavan Solutions
Small companies (fewer than 150 employees)
The next time you board a flight, consider this: You’ll be one of about 2.5 million people flying that day. At peak times, more than 5,000 planes are in the sky. By the time the day ends, about 50,000 flights have taken place.
To organize this chaos, air traffic controllers rely on a powerful management tool called the traffic flow management system. This system displays not just the navigation paths of each aircraft but bad weather patterns, too, often hours in advance. It’s also sophisticated enough to track rocket launches and landings.
Mary Pritchard, the CEO of Cavan Solutions, knows this system intimately. Her company provides the Federal Aviation Administration the technical expertise needed to ensure the nation’s air traffic systems stay ready to handle the complexity and volume of what’s flying above.
While bigger companies may develop these systems, Cavan Solutions helps the FAA conceptualize, integrate and adapt them. “Cavan’s blend of engineers, analysts and air traffic controllers ensures we understand how these systems work internally and how they are supposed to work operationally,” Pritchard says. “Technical services companies like ours help the FAA oversee development of these complex systems and evolve the national airspace system to meet ever-increasing demands.”
Pritchard realized the value of connecting research and real-life application early in her career while working on a NASA research project to develop technology that helped air traffic controllers optimize arrivals based on factors like wind speed, route, airport capacity and more. Realizing her research colleagues would transfer the tools to the FAA and move on to the next research initiative, Pritchard saw an opportunity to close the loop.
“I made a pitch to the FAA that we’re your researchers over here, and you’re struggling to get it in the field — and we know everything about that system because we built it with NASA,” Pritchard says. “The FAA agreed, and that’s what launched my business focus on delivering expertise in research, automation systems and operations.”
After two decades working at the same company — first as a summer intern and eventually as one of its executives — Pritchard launched her first company in 2002 with her oldest brother and called it Flatirons Solutions.
“With a small business, you write your own story and you control your own destiny to a great degree,” says Pritchard, who created and sold another company before launching Cavan Solutions in 2017, this time with her youngest brother. She named it after the ancestral home of her mother’s family — County Cavan in Ireland.
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Some of its employees have followed Pritchard from company to company for several decades. Pritchard says the bond between her and her staff comes from knowing that they will always be working on projects that are engaging and technically challenging.
“We had a downturn with the budgets last year, and we carried people. That would not happen at a big company,” Pritchard continues. “To me, that’s me. That’s what I want to do, and I’m able to control that because it’s a small business, and people appreciate that.”
Pritchard’s experience working for larger companies has led her to one fundamental truth: Small teams can accomplish big dreams.
“The advantage to me of a small business is the nimbleness,” Pritchard says. "There’s nothing that’s out of the realm of possibility.”
Anthony Pierce | Partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld
Large companies (500-999 employees)
Decades before Anthony Pierce became the partner who manages the D.C. office of Akin, he was a young associate lawyer.
On assignment, he spent his nights in a mouse-infested warehouse in New Jersey searching among paper documents for evidence that Crazy Eddie, a consumer electronics chain in the ’70s and ’80s whose commercials promised “insaaane” discounts on products, had defrauded the securities market. The firm had discovered a $60 million shortfall in Crazy Eddie’s inventory when its client took over the company and now had to prove it. Despite the tedious work, Pierce says, he and the other young lawyers and paralegals loved it.
Since then, Crazy Eddie is no more, and technology has made sorting through documents exponentially easier, but one thing remains constant: The people you work with shape your experience. Pierce has been with Akin for 35 years and head of the D.C. office since 2008.
Central to his leadership philosophy is the notion of being a role model, both within the organization and the surrounding D.C. area. Despite his numerous responsibilities, Pierce still practices law, a task that provides him insight into the experiences of partners, associates and other lawyers in the office. He also sets an example to his staff by being involved in organizations that promote the local business community and the law firm.
“If you are in a community, as a business, and you are benefiting from your location, you need to give back to it,” Pierce says. He serves on the board of trustees for the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to low-income individuals and families in the District. He’s also on the board of the Greater Washington Partnership, a coalition of business leaders dedicated to finding solutions for economic growth and enhancing the quality of life in the Washington area.
“A lot of the business we do is uniquely set in Washington, and representing clients who have an issue that involves the intersection of business and government is one of the main things we do here in the Washington office.”
In 2021, in collaboration with Howard University School of Law, Akin created the Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Fellowship to honor the late prominent civil rights leader and former Akin partner who attended Howard Law School. The fellowship offers paid internships to two third-year Howard law students, allowing them to work with the firm’s lobbying and public policy practice in Washington. Additionally, Akin has pledged $1 million to support the Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Law Library.
“We did that because Vernon was a legend. Not just at Akin, but in the country and in the world,” Pierce said. “He loved Howard University with a deep passion.”
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Jordan was one of the reasons Pierce decided to join the firm. “I knew there was a partner in the firm that looked like me, that had a lot of stroke,” Pierce says about the influence Jordan had. “I followed in his footsteps a little bit. So one of the things I try to do is be a role model for kids who are interested in it.”
Pierce advises young associates who aspire to leadership positions to think about how they can grow and improve the business. Above all, he stresses the importance of taking ownership of their projects.
“Giving back to the community, helping clients find partner relationships, maintaining client relationships — all of that is called taking ownership,” Pierce says.
“Nobody gets successful alone. Nobody gets ahead by themselves. Everybody has had help,” Pierce says, acknowledging that success does not happen in a vacuum. “And certainly, no matter the award I’m getting or any endeavor I’m in, there are going to be people that help. I’m not going to be doing it all on my own.”
Mile Corrigan | President and CEO of Noblis
Largest companies (More than 1,000 employees)
Mile Corrigan’s journey to become the leader of Noblis began during the dot-com era.
“I was able to get a lot of experience in a very short amount of time,” Corrigan says. “I developed a lot of technology for various publicly traded companies, for General Motors, e-wallet technology, totally in the realm of web development at the time.”
Corrigan joined Noblis, a nonprofit that specializes in science, technology and strategy services for the federal government, in 2001. “Most people think I was born at Noblis,” Corrigan says, laughing.
She started as a technologist but then progressed through roles in systems architecture, systems engineering, business development and program management. This diverse experience eventually led to her appointment as president and CEO in 2022.
As a leader, Corrigan looks for new collaborations with academia or industry partners while ensuring the company stays at the forefront of technology. She encourages the scientists and engineers at Noblis to stay current with the latest research. She also looks for good people.
“Regardless of function or role in the company, I look for three things: attitude, motivation and commitment,” Corrigan says. “Because if you’re someone who has the right attitude, a positive mindset that’s always seeking continuous learning, continuous improvement — that’s half the battle.”
Mentorship is an important part of the culture. The company’s formal mentorship program pairs less experienced staffers with more senior individuals, allowing them to learn from each other. The program has been especially beneficial to remote employees who may not interact as frequently with the home office.
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“It really allows both the mentee and mentor to both benefit from the relationship,” says Corrigan, who credits a former mentor with instilling trust in her at an early stage by assigning her autonomy with a client. “That’s something I always took to heart as I developed other leaders in the business. They’ll make mistakes, but that’s okay. … Building that trust and letting your teams learn along the way — that’s part of leadership.”
Corrigan says she feels blessed to work in a company that is inclusive, diverse and collaborative. From the moment that employees interview, and throughout their time at Noblis, Corrigan says, she’s always thinking about how to create exceptional experiences for them.
“They’re what makes it all possible, and I view my job as working for them,” Corrigan says. “When I get up every day, I think not only about the employees that work for Noblis but … it’s their families as well. It’s a big weight of responsibility, and I don’t take that for granted.”
