Federal Contractors/Technology: MAX PETERSON

Peterson has run Amazon’s cloud computing business for the government, health care, education and nonprofit sectors since April 2021, after spending four years as vice president for international sales within the worldwide public sector. He replaced Teresa Carlson, who left to become president of a San Francisco tech company last year.

After working in various leadership positions at Dell and CDW-G, Peterson joined AWS in 2012. The public sector cloud business has customers in more than 180 countries and territories, and reported $62.2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2021.

A University of Maryland alumnus, Peterson co-chairs the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Commission and is a member of The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. He also serves on the board of Halcyon, a nonprofit business accelerator.

The company’s satellite and space business also is part of Peterson’s portfolio. AWS recently announced that it remotely operated its “Snowcone,” a portable data storage and transfer device, to process data in orbit as part of a private Axiom Space mission to the International Space Station.

BEST ADVICE FOR OTHERS: Don’t manage to constraints — think big and solve hard problems.

FAVORITE APP: Weber iGrill