About

Kathleen Flanagan is president and chief executive officer of Abt Global. She assumed the position on October 1, 2009, after a distinguished career working across the broad range of markets and policy areas that reflect the company's business today. 

Flanagan joined the company in 1983 as a policy analyst in the Health Area. In 1989 she became managing vice president of the company's Labor Economics Research Area, overseeing research on workforce development and income security programs. In the mid-1990s she launched the International Workforce and Education Practice, winning projects from clients including the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank and U.S. Department of Labor. In 1998, she launched the company's Housing and Community Revitalization practice and built a team of more than 75 researchers and technical assistance staff working on affordable housing and community development policies at the federal, state and local levels. In 2005, she was named group vice president for social, economic, and health policy.

Flanagan is a board member of the Professional Services Council (PSC). She is secretary of the PSC Executive Committee and chair of its Civilian Agencies Council. She is also a board member of the Maryland World Trade Center Institute, member of the Massachusetts Women's Forum and member of the CEO Forum of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society for International Development.

She is a founding member and former president of Jobs Have Priority, a Washington-area nonprofit that provides job training and housing assistance to homeless individuals and those at risk for homelessness.

Tune into her recent conversation with iHeartMedia recounting her inspiring and illustrious career journey.

Leonard M. Hicks, whose 20+ years of experience in business operations and financial management includes leading large-scale growth and transformation for Lockheed Martin and the Mission Essential Group, is Abt Global’s chief financial officer and a member of the executive management team. He is a proven entrepreneur who brings best-in-class leadership and collaborative approaches to problem solving.

Hicks leads and manages all aspects of financial operations and contracts and procurement, as well as facilities and office services. He plays a critical role in executing the company’s strategic plan, including meeting growth goals and driving mission impact for Abt’s clients. An important area of focus is developing scalable processes for long-term, sustainable growth.

Previously, Hicks served as executive vice president and CFO of the Mission Essential Group, a global professional services firm that provides intelligence analysis and operations support to the defense and intelligence communities. Prior to this, he served in several roles at Lockheed Martin, including vice president and CFO of the Air Mobility and Maritime Missions group and vice president and CFO of the Global Training and Logistics group, where he grew the business from slightly under a billion dollars to more than $3 billion in three years by restructuring the business model, enhancing training, and aligning teams to improve collaboration.

Expertise

• Complex business models in the U.S. and internationally
• Accretive mergers and acquisitions
• Delivering best-in-class financial operations
• Leaving the campsite better than you found it

Lisa Simeon is Abt Global’s Chief Operations Officer.  In this role, Simeon is establishing a global operations function to cover all aspects of project management. It will include continuous improvement and scalability of Abt’s standards, processes, and digital platforms for project start-up and closeout, workforce planning, risk management, and quality review to achieve strong financial performance and ensure client satisfaction across the company. She will continue to oversee Human Resources and will add responsibility for global security operations and emergency response to her portfolio.

Simeon joined Abt in March, 2019 as Chief Human Resources Officer and was promoted to COO in September, 2020.  She has more than 20 years of experience in all aspects of human resources, including talent management, compensation, HR technology, organizational design/change management, leadership development and strategic planning.  Her global experience includes projects and assignments in China, India and Sweden.

Prior to joining Abt, Simeon served as VP of HR Operations and Programs at Engility-SAIC a publicly traded, $2B professional services company with 7,000 employees. She was responsible for enterprise compensation, HRIS, HR compliance, learning and development, employee relations and organizational development.

Prior to this, she was VP of HR with ITT/Exelis--now Harris--where she was responsible for a $1.2B division that had more than 4,000 employees across the United States, Middle East, Germany and Australia. During her tenure, she also led the enterprise talent management function, which included responsibility for the company talent review process and facilitated succession and leadership development plans across the top 200 high potentials and successor candidates within the company. 

A native New Yorker, Simeon holds a B.S. in Curriculum and Instruction from Long Island University, an M.S. in Organizational Development from Manhattanville College and an MBA in Global Human Resources Leadership from Rutgers University. 

Baris Yener has more than 25 years of experience in executive leadership, growth strategy development, and organizational transformation. His business-development and project work has involved a wide range of clients, including the World Bank, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other private sector and federal agencies.

As Chief Client Officer at Abt, Yener leads client strategy and growth to ensure the voice of the customer drives investment decisions, capability development, and market execution. He is recognized for building strong client partnerships, aligning cross‑functional leadership around customer needs, and translating market feedback into a competitive advantage and differentiated impact.

Prior to Abt, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Growth Officer for Public Sector & Technology at ICF, where he helped deliver record top-line growth in consecutive years by modernizing capture, review, and sales processes around client experience and mission value.

Earlier, Yener spent 13 years at Booz Allen Hamilton leading the firm’s Market Sensing & Development capability, enabling senior leaders to integrate customer feedback and market intelligence into strategic decision-making. He has also held leadership roles at Alion Science & Technology, Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), Washington Asset Management Inc., and Direct Export, Inc.

Expertise

• Growth and strategy development
• Organizational design and transformation
• Talent development
• Government acquisition strategy
• Mergers and acquisitions

Chris Long has over 35  years of management consulting and service delivery expertise in the public-sector market. At Abt, he is focused on shaping and driving delivery of strategy and transformation solutions to our clients. He provides executive oversight of operations, growth, delivery, and innovation, while fostering collaboration enterprise-wide.

Prior to this, Long led business and client success for Booz Allen Hamilton in the Commerce, Homeland Security, and Treasury markets for 17 years. Focused primarily on Strategy and Modernization initiatives, Long built, fielded and led multidisciplinary teams to tackle major new program initiatives for National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Justice. FirstNet, and Library of Congress. In addition, he drove firm-wide capability development initiatives around transformation lifecycle and Grants Management to be deployed across all markets. Earlier in his career, he led SAIC’s support to EPA’s Office of Solid Waste, focusing on regulatory management and risk reduction in the Oil and Gas, Mining, and Fossil Fuel Combustion industries.

Chris holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Lewis and Clark College and a Master of Science in Technology and Human Affairs from Washington University in St. Louis.  Outside of work, Chris is the father of 3, and, along with his wife, is a small scale livestock producer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Expertise

• IT Modernization and Service Delivery
• Program Design and Mission Implementation
• Enterprise Strategy and Organizational Change