GovCon Deal Readiness: What Buyers Want—and What Sellers Often Miss

With over 20 years of professional experience, Tom developed a deep, hands-on understanding of M&A and technical advisory services while working for the world's most prestigious professional services and private equity firms. He has served as a PE portfolio company CEO and a strategic advisor to the PE community and has built, run, and sold multiple companies. In addition, Tom has led or participated in numerous transactions, including small to enterprise-level M&A deals. He has considerable experience with strategic planning, business development, interim management, and technical advisory services, catering to private equity firms, portfolio companies, and public and private enterprises.

Tom creates and unlocks value, helping owners evaluate and prepare for various financial events, such as recapitalization, management buyouts, family transitions, or other forms of monetization. His unique blend of experiences as a former business owner, PE operating partner, and C-level executive equips him with the insight to maximize enterprise value and the stakeholder's benefit. 

Further, Tom is well-known for his ability to solve intricate business challenges for middle-market clients across industries. He leverages his technical knowledge in application development, cyber security, and systems integration, along with his business acumen, to create unique, out-of-the-box solutions.

Before joining Schneider Downs, Tom co-founded Springer Lawson and Associates, LLC, which assisted clients in various industries with value creation and sell-side advisory services.

Tom is married with three children and enjoys outdoor activities, youth sports, and spending time with his family. He is a U.S. Air Force Veteran and holds a B.S. in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems from North Carolina Wesleyan and an M.S. in Telecommunications from Johns Hopkins University.

Kathryn is a Member in the Business Department at McDonald Hopkins and part of the Firm’s Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Group. Her practice is focused on representing companies across a broad range of industries in various types of domestic and international transactions, including buyers and sellers in complex mergers and acquisitions, business restructurings, asset purchase and sale transactions, and equity purchase and sale transactions. Kathryn also represents companies and investors in venture capital and angel investment transactions with companies from a wide range of industries at various stages of growth. Her experience includes representing clients in the negotiation and implementation of institutional financing and commercial loan transactions with large institutional lenders.

Tanice “TK” Gonsalves is a seasoned technology entrepreneur, product architect, growth strategist, and CEO with more than 20 years of experience identifying market opportunities, building companies, architecting high-value growth strategies, and assembling the people, partnerships, and technology required to execute them.

A hallmark of TK’s career is her ability to see where markets are heading and begin positioning companies for those opportunities before they become obvious. Her career spans AI and emerging technology, commercial product development, federal contracting, strategic growth, partnerships, joint ventures, M&A, cybersecurity, data analytics, healthcare technology, logistics, and digital transformation.

In the federal market, TK has helped win 50+ federal contracts and, during one standout period of less than four years, she led the succesful capture of 10 major federal contract vehicle wins, six through full-and-open competition, in addition to subsequent task-order wins. Her experience includes opportunities representing billions of dollars in potential contract value across defense and civilian agencies.

TK is particularly known for architecting the entire ecosystem behind growth, identifying the opportunity, developing the strategy, aligning the right capabilities, assembling best-in-class partners, structuring joint ventures, creating competitive differentiation, and positioning organizations to execute and scale.

She has built major pursuit teams involving 30+ top-tier partners, developed more than seven joint ventures, participated in strategic acquisitions, and cultivated an extensive network spanning federal contractors, technology companies, innovators, and Silicon Valley-style emerging technology firms.

Today, TK is bringing that same combination of market foresight, technology vision, strategic execution, and company-building experience to Silca, with a focus on AI, quantum technologies, and the next generation of commercial technology innovation.

Ashish Khot is the founder and CEO of TechnoMile. A seasoned entrepreneur and skilled technologist, for more than 2 decades, Ashish has helped to create and grow successful technology companies. Prior to starting TechnoMile, he ran a successful consultancy tailoring Salesforce CRM to the needs of federal contractors. Before that, he co-founded and provided product and engineering leadership at uKnow.com (acquired by Bark Technologies) and Cruise.com, as well as served as a technology executive at buySafe, Inc.

Ashish holds an MS from Clemson University and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Mumbai. He has a passion for helping entrepreneurs and mentoring them to successfully launch and grow businesses.

Stuart Lawson is a Managing Director and co-founder of Potomac Allied Capital, LLC. He has more than 30 years' financial and operations expertise as a consultant, CFO or VP-Finance, including numerous capital raises, M&A transactions (buy and sell side), two IPOs and a going private transaction. Stuart has worked with numerous companies to help prepare them for sale at maximum value and successfully lead them through the sale process. He has extensive experience working as a strategist, board member, and sell/buy side advisor within the govcon sector.