Meet Bryan

Bryan Shrader is the strategy and operations lead for Booz Allen’s national security business. Previously, he led the firm’s business within the United States Government Classified agency, as well as the National Reconnaissance Office and NASA. In these roles, he was focused on providing expertise in analytics, consulting services, and technology innovation to a broad base of federal clients.

Bryan has more than 20 years of experience supporting clients from across the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, and federal civilian agencies. He has broad analytic expertise, building models for space-based collection, ground-based processing, and advanced weapons and IT systems. He has also developed budget strategies and analyses to ensure programmatic compliance with oversight authorities such as the Office of Management and Budget and the Director of National Intelligence.

Bryan has an M.B.A. from the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in economics from Wake Forest University. He is certified as a cost estimator analyst and project management professional. 

What makes you passionate about your work at Booz Allen? It’s exciting to take clients’ challenges and make them my own. I like working closely with clients to help them achieve their goals.

What leadership approaches do you bring to your team? My expertise is in business management, so I bring our team together to build and execute effective business strategies. I ask questions and examine alternative approaches to find the best way to help our clients.  

What attracts talented team members to Booz Allen? As an institution, we are very flexible. If you are a junior employee and interested in learning as much as you can about a lot of topic areas, we can support you in that. If you are more seasoned and have a well-defined skill area that you want to grow to an expert level, we can help you with that too. There really is something for everyone here at Booz Allen.

What characteristics are you looking for when you hire at Booz Allen? Passionate service and unflinching courage. We really do live and breathe our clients’ challenges. We can work with you to learn a specific skill, but we want to know that you are passionate about changing the world around you—for your clients, your colleagues, and your community. To do that, you have to be willing to take on the hardest challenges and collaborate with your teammates.

What is important for your clients today? Our clients focus on some of the most critical intelligence missions throughout the world. They can’t afford to spend much time focused on long-term strategy when each day presents a new challenge. Our clients have to maintain the mission while transforming. We want to help them implement new innovations without disruption. That requires new ways of thinking and developing new solutions.  

What big changes do you see in the future? We continue to evolve from traditional workspaces to more remote, virtual environments. Every year, more people collaborate from geographically-dispersed locations. This will only accelerate in the future, even in classified environments. In addition, machine intelligence and on-demand access to information will continue to increase exponentially, providing solutions to problems deemed too challenging in today’s environment. The future will continue to be driven by today’s innovation.

What are the threats on the horizon? One of our biggest threats is complacency. In the national security domain, we can’t sit back and rely on solutions that were effective years ago. Our adversaries continue to evolve their planning and techniques, and we must stay vigilant in driving new solutions.

How do you keep your team motivated in an evolving industry? It’s easy to motivate a team when you have them working to solve their clients’ hardest challenges. Every day presents a new opportunity to change the world and make us safer. It’s motivating to know you are a part of something bigger than just you. 

What business advice stands out to you? Focus on your clients first. If you make them happy, the rest is easy.  This advice is one of the reasons I’ve made getting to know my clients such a priority in my day-to-day work. Developing these relationships further enables me to understand and fulfill the goals set before me.

What was your first job? I worked in a restaurant. Perhaps it wasn’t my favorite job, but it taught me about hard work, customer service, and collaboration. It also reinforced my interest in pursuing a different career path!

What best describes your personality? Probably conscientious. I’m pretty organized, focused and goal-oriented. I think that might also suggest that I am a bit stubborn!

What do you enjoy when you aren’t at work? I love spending time with my wife and son, and our dogs. Whether we are out in the country enjoying the horses or at the beach playing in the sand, any opportunity to spend time with my favorite people is time well spent. I’m also an avid sports fan. Any chance I get to catch a sporting event, I take it.

What can we do to be happier in life? The number one thing is spending more time listening to each other and less time trying to be heard. I think that is good advice for work and home.