April 2025 | Issue #37
Well, hello there Spring!
As we reflect on the first quarter of 2025, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate some exciting milestones and acknowledge the dedication that continues to fuel our success. This past quarter, we’ve made significant progress, including impactful collaborations with the Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience (ODR&R), securing a cyber security contract with Los Angeles County, and winning a major crisis communications contract with the Bay Area UASI. These accomplishments are a testament to the strength of our team and the trust our clients place in us.
In the face of a constantly evolving government landscape, our team’s resolve has only grown stronger in our mission to make the world a safer place. I am immensely proud of how our people have remained adaptable, agile, and committed to delivering innovative solutions in dynamic environments. Our recent listening sessions underscored this commitment as we explored how we can continue to be a valuable resource to our clients while staying connected and supporting one another.
As we look ahead, we remain focused on maintaining the high standards of excellence on our current contracts while expanding our footprint into new and exciting areas of work. I am incredibly proud of the creative problem-solving our team brings to the table and of our collective optimism about the meaningful impact we will continue to have in building resilience.
Together, we are making a significant difference. With your continued dedication, I have no doubt that we will keep pushing the boundaries of what we can accomplish. Let’s stay focused, keep working hard, and continue to grow through the opportunities ahead.
Michelle Constant, CEO
Cyndi Mellen - Business Development Director
Cyndi is a business development professional who brings over 15 years of experience across CONSTANT’s practice areas. She joins us from New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM), where she served as Executive Director of Strategic Operations. Her most recent consulting role was with Cadmus, where she managed BD and program delivery. Cyndi led and supported successful bids across multiple sectors, to include awards with HHS ASPR, DHS CWMD, NYSERDA, and VDEM. She also ran Cadmus’ State & Local Portfolio, focusing on building BD infrastructure to sustainably grow the business.
Cyndi offers a client-focused perspective through her time in both government and government consulting. At NYCEM, Cyndi led agency- and citywide strategic planning initiatives. She also served as an Emergency Operations Center Manager during response and recovery operations, including the 2024 NJ earthquake, CrowdStrike outage, asylum seeker operations, and Post-Tropical Cyclone Ida. At Cadmus, she managed client delivery for both Federal and SLTT projects, to include FEMA FQS, DHS-wide COOP planning, and BAUASI cybersecurity planning. Cyndi also formerly worked at the University at Albany’s National Center for Security & Preparedness.
Cyndi is a Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) and Project Management Professional (PMP). She is an alumna of the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany, holding a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree in Homeland Security and Government Information Strategy and Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.
In her spare time, Cyndi enjoys yoga, exploring NYC’s food scene, and cultivating her minor expertise in mindfulness and habit formation.
CONSTANT's March, April, May, & June Birthdays
As we celebrate another quarter of success, it’s important to take a moment to recognize the birthdays of our incredible team members. Please join me in wishing a very happy birthday to those celebrating this quarter! Your hard work and dedication make a meaningful impact, and we’re grateful to have each of you as part of our team.
- March 13th – Oliver Martin
- April 6th – Alyssa Antczak
- April 12th – Jayson Kratoville
- April 16th – Christy Carry
- April 26th – Derek Morrison
- May 6th – Alex Meyer
- May 9th – Sloan Grissom
- May 19th – Brea Dees
- June 15th – Jessica Driskill
- June 15th – Joshua McDuffie
- June 22nd – Kim Hayward Buys
Happy Birthday, may all the wishes you make on your candles come true!
CONSTANT's March, April, May, & June Work Anniversaries
It’s important to recognize the hard work and dedication of our team members who are celebrating work anniversaries this quarter. Their continued contributions are a key part of our success, and we’re grateful for the impact they’ve had on our growth. Please join in congratulating them on reaching these significant career milestones!
- March 1st – Alyssa Antczak – 2 years
- March 6th – Nathan Carpenter – 2 years
- March 21st – Derek Morrison – 3 years
- March 28th – Ali Leis – 2 years
- April 1st – Nicole Christensen – 4 years
- April 5th – Tracy To – 4 years
- June 6th – Christy Carry – 4 years
- June 6th – Dan Smith – 3 years
- June 6th – Dylan Yates – 3 years
- June 13th – Breanna Dees – 3 years
- June 16th – Dana Bell – 2 years
- June 21st – Kevin Koller – 3 years
A Successful Q1 for State and Local Bookings
The Business Development (BD) Team is thrilled to announce a very strong first quarter for bookings on the SLTT side! This key performance indicator (KPI) captures new contracts awarded to CONSTANT between January 1, 2025, and March 31, 2025, for SLTT clients. The KPI accounts for awards from some proposals submitted in late 2024 and decisions made on proposals submitted in 2025.
At the time of writing, noting that some opportunities are still in the ‘awarded pending contract stage’ where we have been notified of the award but are still working through contract negotiations, our state and local bookings have totaled $1.7M. This is tracking at almost 60% of the way towards our original yearly goal despite only having 3 months of the year completed. Furthermore, we have submitted proposals valued at about $4.3M during Q1, setting us up with a strong pipeline of new projects that could come our way. For now, be on the lookout – we have two (2) large win announcements that will officially be coming soon that are part of the bookings, mentioned by Michelle above!
As the BD Team has balanced this large portfolio of SLTT proposals throughout Q1, thank you to the team members who have assisted with proposal content, reviews, and interviews. Please do not hesitate to reach out if the BD Team can support you with solutioning for an SLTT client!
In Like a Lion: Ops is Starting Spring Strong
It has been a phenomenal start to the year for CONSTANT and the Operations Team. We’ve spun up on new and expanding projects from last year like SBA, FQS, and CBP, all while BD continues to bring in new work for us to tackle. In this quarter’s CONSTANT Connections, we wanted to celebrate some of the many accomplishments from Q1:
- Jessica and Dylan deployed to Florida to connect Hurricane Milton survivors with loan opportunities for mitigation projects that help them build back better. This required significant leadership and support from Kim and the wider SBA team. Our next deployment is coming up in April to North Carolina.
- Ali, Dan, and Alyssa built an Evacuation and Shelter-In-Place plan for Long Beach as local wildfires put an increased spotlight on preparedness efforts.
- Sloan, Charlene, and Nathan are spinning up a project in support of DHS CWMD to help cities with the critical first 30 minutes of decision-making after a chemical or biological release.
- Mona, Derek, Kevin, and Nathan are setting new industry standards with the Sonoma Recovery Plan.
- Kim, Amanda, and the FQS team continue to find creative solutions to FEMA’s essential training needs for the incident workforce.
- Mona and Lenah built an inclusive social media plan for Cal OES.
- Ali, Manny, and Charlene have begun to support San Joaquin with building 16 public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) plans in four months—they have already built significant trust and the client is talking about expanding the work.
This list is only a snapshot of the impact our team makes every day. We’re excited to see what the rest of 2025 brings!
Planing Seeds: People and Culture Priorities
In January, CONSTANT onboarded the Boost team to take over more traditional human resources functions. We’ve been working diligently to get everyone up to speed. We appreciate everyone’s patience in the meantime.
At the same time, we’ve been thinking about our People and Culture priorities going forward. Our recent listening sessions and wider informal conversations have been critical to the entire team building the company together. Here’s what you can expect:
- Democratizing Team Culture and Engagement. Leadership and central P&C functions can foster a strong team culture, but our culture is defined by the variety of perspectives our team members bring. Considering the team’s priorities and recent Federal regulation changes, we are going to re-focus our EDI Committee on Team Culture and Engagement. Manny will remain in his leadership role and has been working with ELT on a strategy for ensuring that CONSTANT remains a welcoming environment for everyone.
- Increasing opportunities for connectivity among team members. This is a priority that we heard loud and clear in the listening sessions. More to come as we refine ideas.
- Making the routine…routine. Over the past few years, we have invested heavily in HR infrastructure that should enable efficient self-service processes for most things. We are working with Boost to restructure our processes with this in mind while relying on their expertise as a strong central resource.
Team Culture & Engagement: Building Connections and Moving Forward
As we continue to grow and evolve, our Team Culture and Engagement Committee has taken shape—an important shift that underscores our ongoing commitment to fostering a positive, inclusive environment that strengthens our internal culture and client relationships.
Recently, we held internal listening sessions where team members shared valuable feedback on how we can grow and adapt in response to changes within the government contracting space. Key themes from these conversations included the desire to remain a resource for both our clients and one another, as well as the importance of staying connected as a team. Some great ideas emerged, such as dedicating the first 5-10 minutes of meetings to icebreakers and get-to-know-you questions, which will help us build stronger relationships. There was also strong support for celebrating each other’s backgrounds, with ideas like sharing recipes and cultural stories to deepen our connections.
We’re particularly proud of how our team has embodied flexibility in this rapidly changing environment. Your ability to adapt, support one another, and stay committed to our mission is truly inspiring. We look forward to seeing how the ideas we talked about in the listening sessions will further strengthen our culture and help us stay connected as we move forward. Thank you all for your openness and dedication to executing our mission every day.
Springing Forward: Key Finance Reminders & Kudos
As we welcome Spring and kick off the second quarter, we wanted to send a few reminders to help keep things running smoothly on the finance side. First, please ensure you enter your time each day. This helps maintain accurate billing and ensures we’re all staying on top of our projects and deadlines. Consistency here makes a big difference for everyone involved.
We’d also like to remind you to review and adhere to our Travel and Expense policy. Proper documentation and following the guidelines for submitting expenses will help ensure timely reimbursement and avoid delays. Additionally, please make sure to submit your expense reports on time. Timely submissions help our team stay organized and process everything efficiently, keeping things on track.
We’d also like to recognize our Project Managers for their outstanding work with Unanet in managing project budgets. By building out Work Breakdown Structures and effectively forecasting team members’ time, they’ve ensured that projects stay on track and within budget. This level of precision is crucial to our success, and we appreciate the attention to detail that keeps everything running smoothly. Thank you to everyone for your continued dedication!
Keeping Out the Squirrels: Building IT Security Infrastructure for the Future
CONSTANT is a remote team—our computers are our office. We are also trusted with sensitive information that it is our duty to protect. As cybersecurity professionals, we know all too well how vulnerable IT systems can be to intrusion. In engaging DP Solutions as an external IT provider, we’ve brought in a scalable IT security infrastructure that is in line with industry standards.
Our new security infrastructure has seven features:
- Advanced infrastructure security hardening, which applies NIST-compliant network security features like access controls, monitoring, and redundancy.
- Advanced Microsoft 365 tenant security hardening, including password/MFA policies, idle session time-outs, external email tagging, and geo-filtering.
- 24×7 managed detection and response to mitigate and interdict potential threats.
- Phishing testing and end-user security awareness training.
- Vulnerability testing to help ensure our systems are resilient against known attack vectors.
- Cybersecurity form assistance to ensure compliance with government contracting requirements
- Annual review from a Virtual Chief Information Security Officer to evaluate our system security.
The work we do is important, and our clients trust us to safeguard the information we receive and produce. We know our team takes this responsibility seriously; continued investments in security ensure we have your back.
Our mission is to make the world a safer place.
It’s that simple, and that’s why we are here. We have a strategic plan for the next three years, called CONSTANT Strategy, which outlines what our biggest priorities are:
- Take care of our people
- Forward our mission
- Respond to our clients’ most pressing needs
- Expand strategically across markets
- Build infrastructure for the future
To help us execute on our mission, we have developed the CONSTANT Credo and our aligned core values (see the graphic below). We live by these.
Our Credo
