John Lehman, President and Co-Founder
John Lehman is the co-founder of Crystal Management, LLC (Crystal). He is responsible for providing the vision, direction and leadership to achieve company goals. This includes creating a high performance culture led by outstanding talent as well as ensuring continued client satisfaction with all Crystal contracts. John founded the company in 2005 with business partner Dawn McKenna after both of them successfully contributed to the renovation of the Pentagon Information Technology (IT) infrastructure on the Command Communications Survivability Program (CCSP) in response to the events that occurred at the Pentagon on 9/11.
John leverages over 25 years of significant executive leadership, program management, financial and sales experience to help him drive Crystal’s growth and client satisfaction. His expertise is in project management, information management, network engineering and systems integration. For the last four years John has led the Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) aspects of the Yongsan Relocation Program, Seoul, Korea. Before that John spent seven years as Program Manager at the Network Infrastructure Services Agency and Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the $485 Million dollar Pentagon Renovation Command Communications Survivability Program. John has twenty years of progressively responsible positions in the U.S. Army including the Director, Information Management, Personnel Command, and U.S. Army in Korea for two years, the Automation Manager, 2nd Infantry Division, U.S. Army in Korea for two years, and spent many years serving in various logistics automation management capacities.
Dawn McKenna, Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration and Co-Founder
Dawn McKenna is the co-founder of Crystal Management, LLC (Crystal). She is responsible for finance, accounting, contracting, human resources and security. Dawn’s goal is to maintain and expand the company’s financial and business infrastructure to support its growth and strategic plan.
Dawn has over 23 years of project management, acquisition and contracts management experience. Dawn was a warranted Contracting Officer for the U.S. Coast Guard, working on several major acquisitions including the Deepwater Program and 41’ Motor Lifeboats. A Subject Matter Expert (SME) in federal government acquisition programs, Dawn lead Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of the Interior personnel and subcontractor project teams, providing project management and acquisition services to the U.S. Army, U.S. Coast Guard, Washington Headquarters Services (WHS) and the Office of Naval Research. She provided direct support for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Fast Response Cutter – B Class major acquisition, the Pentagon’s Command Control Communications Program (CCSP), the Defense Continuity Integrated Network (DCIN) program, and the Pentagon Renovation and Construction Program (PENREN/C) Renovation contract.
John Barnes – Executive Vice President of International Operations
As Executive Vice President of International Operations, John Barnes is responsible for ensuring outstanding delivery of all international Crystal services and solutions. Simultaneously, John is also serving as the head of Department for Program Integration for the Yongsan Relocation Program in Korea.
John brings 40 years of experience leading and developing engineering and management teams responsible for increasingly complex telecommunications projects and information systems. As a Department of Defense, Certified Acquisition and Project Manager he provided the leadership for the implementation of the Army’s portion of the NIPRNET and SIPRNET as well as the early installation of Local Area Networks at Army posts around the world. During DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, John served as the Project Manager (PM) for the Southwest Asia Telecommunications System (SATS). As a Colonel, John served as the initial PM for the information management and telecommunications renovation of the Pentagon where he obtained the necessary funding and established the architecture and plans that would successfully guide the renovation. John concluded his career as a Strategic Fellow for the Chief of Staff, Army where his studies focused on better business processes for the Army through information technology.
Since retiring from the Army in 1997, John has been actively sought by several companies to provide his technical and executive leadership abilities on major IT programs worth several billion dollars. Most recently, John was the President of Evisda Inc. where he was responsible for all finance, operations, sales and business development, marketing, and human resources. Previously, John was Chief Operating Officer (COO) for ZeNETeX Inc from 2006-2007 and from 2000-2006, was the President of Engineering Professional Services (EPS) Technology Solutions.
Ernie Willard – Executive Vice President of Business Development
As Executive Vice President of Business Development, Ernie Willard is responsible for driving sales and revenue growth across the entire marketspace. Ernie brings 27 years of experience successfully growing large portfolios of business as well as leading large, complex programs. Prior to joining Crystal, Ernie worked for EDS, now Hewlett Packard, for 25 years, most recently, responsible for strategic planning, growth and delivery of Hewlett Packard’s (HP’s) Department of Homeland Security (DHS) business which grew nearly 250% over four years. Previous positions with HP included executive oversight of the DHS Second Data Center program and the Command Communications Survivability Program (CCSP) worth over $1 Billion dollars collectively. Ernie also led the HP Department of Justice (DOJ), Intel Community, US Army, and Air Force business in prior positions with HP. Ernie’s business acumen and broad knowledge of the above mentioned clients enables Crystal to develop and deliver creative solutions to meet our clients' needs.