Federal Contractors | Technology 2023: MAHFUZ AHMED

It’s been a landmark year for Ahmed and the $1.3 billion global managed services and staffing firm he founded as a side venture back in the 1990s.

In May, his company, Digital Intelligence Systems (DISYS), rebranded as Dexian, the result of its 2021 acquisition of Florida-based IT staffing firm Signature Consultants.

Ahmed started DISYS in the mid-1990s when he was working as a consultant for Northrop Grumman and a senior technical manager for Mobil Oil. As preparations for the feared Y2K computer bug geared up, his firm landed its first major clients.

Today, Dexian has 12,000 employees working across 70 offices, serving clients that include a host of Fortune 500 companies.

Ahmed, who graduated from George Mason University and Harvard Business School, made an October 2022 gift of $250,000 to GMU’s College of Engineering and Computing, which is funding the new Dean’s Technology Innovation Fund. As a newly arrived freshman from Bangladesh, “without the nurturing of my professors at the engineering department,” recalls Ahmed, “I don’t think I would have been able to come to the job market with all the skills that were necessary to thrive.”