KDM Team

Deon Norals is the President and CEO of iHealth Innovative Solutions (iHealth), a Health Information Technology organization that provides robust innovative technology solutions to help solve today’s healthcare constraints. iHealth supports customers by delivering innovative and visionary technology solutions to help transform and improve patient care, health information technology and health intelligence. Prior to iHealth, Deon served as Chief Information Officer for Westover Consultants, Inc., which is a management consulting organization.
 

Mr. Norals is a highly seasoned, results-driven executive with IT-to-business vision, industry leading execution, and a proven successful track record in delivering innovation. His career spans over 25 years of conceiving, designing and implementing Information Technology (IT) solutions, as well as managing IT resources, data center migrations, security operations management, and service desk management both domestically and internationally within various healthcare environments. He is also a creative problem solver who focuses on achieving business goals through the innovative use of technology and directing diverse groups of business and technical minds towards a balance of short- and long-term objectives.

Mr. Norals is focused on building a strong, energetic, passionate, no-nonsense team culture, which will be built on the celebration of success and the transparent discussion of failure. He also has strategic leadership experience in delivering and stretching business goals through the product definition, software design and development and ongoing operations of a visionary and robust technical architectural strategy.

 Deon has a proven commitment to innovation at all levels that have helped achieve critical business and IT imperatives to deliver exceptional outcomes across various value chains. He is also experienced with and has prudently applied many business and information technology practices, ranging from Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), COBIT, ITIL, CPHIMS, and Six Sigma.
 

Deon also earned his Executive M.B.A. from the prestigious Howard University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology and Security from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, and his Associate of Science degree from Dunwoody College of Technology. He currently serves as the President of National Association Health Services Executive Washington D.C. Chapter. He also serves on various alumni and advisory boards and is an advocate of community service.

Dr. Benita Bell received her doctoral degree in nutrition and chemistry from Howard University. Her bachelors and masters degrees are also in chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina A&T State University. Dr. Bell has taught chemistry at Howard University in the School of Allied Health Sciences, North Carolina Central University and Bennett College where she was an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the Director of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Program. She was awarded a NASA Administrator's Fellowship position where she served as a NASA Fellow in the Office of Biological and Physical Research at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. There she developed a pilot clinical research study on soy isoflavones and their role in immunity and heart disease.

Dr. Bell has also had corporate experience working with Johnson and Johnson and Smithkline in the medical and pharmaceutical sales industry. She has received numerous honors and awards, a few of which include the recipient of the Board of Trustees Faculty Teaching Excellence Award and the Division of Higher Education Exemplary Teacher of the Year Award. Dr. Bell is currently working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center with the Minority University Space Interdisciplinary Network (MUSPIN) in the area of Astrobiology. She is the Co-Director of the Minority Institution Astrobiology Collaborative (MIAC). Her research interests are in the areas of astrobiology, science education and women's health. She joined GESTAR in May 2011.

Charles Sills is a recognized authority on U.S. Government Contracting, and an advocate for Small Business access to Federal and Military contracting opportunities, serving as a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Council; an observer to the White House sponsored Inter-Agency Task Force on Veterans Business Development; and a member of VET-Force (Veterans Entrepreneurship Task Force). He has helped moderate the Army, Navy and Air Force Contracting Summits in Jacksonville, Norfolk Naval Base, Ft. Hood, Texas and Eglin Air Force Base for the Defense Leadership Forum; keynoted the Veterans Day Panel on "Wartime and Worldwide Government Contracting" at the Mt. Vernon Chamber’s forum on "Winning Army Contracts – from Ft. Belvoir to Afghanistan"; and was commended by the Small Business Affairs Director, U.S. Army, for the "overwhelming response" to his presentation on the "Marketing to Prime Contractors" Panel at the National Veteran Small Business Conference.

He is President of FED/Contracting LLC, a Washington DC based consultancy that assists U.S. Small Businesses, as well as overseas firms and their American affiliates, in accessing Government acquisition programs; helps Prime Contractors qualify Veteran, Minority and Woman-owned vendors as teammates for project opportunities with mandated Diversity Supplier content; and brings Small Businesses and Fortune 1000 corporations together under Government Agency ‘Mentor-Protégé’ partnerships. Based on the U.S. Defense Dept. Mentor-Protégé program that he managed for Trillacorpe Construction, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, the company was awarded the prestigious 2010 Defense Dept. Nunn-Perry Award for "superior performance in the areas of business growth and return on investment, Government contracting, technical performance and quality management".

Mr. Sills is a former Naval Intelligence Officer who served in a succession of National Security positions in the Pentagon, including the National Military Intelligence Center and the Defense Intelligence Agency/Worldwide Estimates Directorate (Deputy Director), following assignments on the staff of the U.S. Middle East Force Command (based in Bahrain with responsibility for the Persian Gulf/Red Sea/Indian Ocean area), and the Geopolitical Briefing & Analysis Division, Supreme Allied Commander NATO/Atlantic. He received numerous commendations for his contributions to Defense Dept. crisis teams and special reports, including a series of briefings to Members of Congress on the findings of “Project Provodnik” which he directed, a comprehensive re-thinking of Soviet conventional and strategic Military capabilities as well as the effectiveness of their projection of ‘soft’ power throughout the Developing World. He was recently appointed Sr. Advisor, Global Partnerships Development for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, mandated by the U.S. Congress, which is developing conflict resolution and regional stabilization and security initiatives based on Eisenhower’s legacy as NATO’s first Supreme Allied Commander. 

Mr. Sills also has extensive experience planning and directing international industrial, infrastructure, environmental and energy initiatives, having served as a member of the Danube Task Force, the governing council that ran the Danube Basin Environmental Restoration Program led by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development and the UN Development Program, involving 13 countries from Austria to Moldova. He also served on the Japan-U.S. Joint Fund for Social & Economic Development in Central/Eastern Europe; the Helsinki Commission, focused on the environmental clean-up of the Baltic Sea; the Kaliningrad Defense Conversion Initiative which sought to transform Soviet weapons factories to consumer product manufacturing; and the NGO Delegation to NAFTA, where he helped draft the Environmental Supplements. And he was responsible for securing major funding support for the Smithsonian Institute's biodiversity preservation/cancer cure research program in Brazil's Amazon region; for the Sassari, Sardinia symposium on ozone depletion organized by the International Council of Scientific Unions, that led directly to the Montreal Protocol which has been successful in mitigating/reducing the ‘Ozone Hole’; and for the White House Presidential Awards program sponsored by the President's Council on Sustainable Development.

Mr. Sills led the Martin Marietta Aerospace (now Lockheed Martin) team that won the contract for and installed the world’s largest (at that time) solar photovoltaic energy installation, under a pilot program co-funded by the U.S. and Saudi Arabian Governments; researched and wrote a worldwide, country-by-country survey of renewable energy technologies and commercialization opportunities; and testified before Congress on the need for pro-active U.S. Government support for advanced renewable energy R&D and demonstration programs. Currently, he serves on both the Defense & Security Advisory Committee and the International Advisory Committee for the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE); onthe International Committee of the DC Chamber of Commerce; and the International Advisory Committee of the National Council on US-Arab Relations (NCUSAR).

He also serves as a Board Member and Advisor on International Security, Energy and Environment for the Eurasia Center/Eurasian Business Coalition, where he has planned and moderated conferences on “Doing Business with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)”, and “Transforming a Continent: Energy and Infrastructure Investment Opportunities on the New Silk Road”. In that capacity, he was designated one of only five or six U.S. delegates to the annual Moscow Conference on International Security in 2015, 2016 and 2017 – involving approx. 900 delegates and 40-plus Defense Ministers focused on implementing cooperative programs to contain and defeat worldwide terrorism.

Mr. Sills’ education includes an M.A. in Defense & Foreign Policy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts and Harvard Universities); and an A.B., Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a graduate of Collegiate School in New York City, the U.S.’s 2nd oldest school founded in New Amsterdam in 1628. 

Returning for his second year as an intern, Samuel Hammond, a second semester senior at Old Dominion University studying economics, is no stranger to the culture and intentionality of drive at KDM/OGTV. During his first year with the KDM team, he wore several hats, and performed a variety of tasks. Sam helped with Strategic Business Assessment (SBA’s) with partners of KDM by editing and revising documents before being presented to the KDM client. He has also drafted a Department of Defense contact book to enable easy contact between KDM and key decision makers within DoD. Among several other tasks performed, Samuel completed a business survey between KDM and Cramer, a Videonitch client partnership that was launched back in 2018. Sam is currently in the process of liaising with KDM and Teamesteem, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, whose mission is to meet the mentoring and career development goals of college students. Sam will work with Team KDM and its team of virtual interns to help scale the organization’s delivery system, and to promote Teamesteem to both the federal government and to corporate America as a 21st century workforce development, and mentoring program for young professional talent.

In the Spring semester of 2019, Samuel Hammond had the privilege to study abroad in the United Kingdom. In between taking higher level economic and finance courses, Samuel got involved on campus by joining both the ballet and boxing clubs offered on campus. His learning abroad experience enabled him to distinguish political policy, society, and culture differences while studying in Europe. In between semester breaks, Samuel had the chance to travel to neighboring countries such as Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and France. But his greatest venture was when he left the western world and travelled to Ghana where he experienced life in a third world country and rekindled with his father. Despite being born of Ghanaian descent, Samuel still felt the unpleasantness of culture shock while with his family. It was while in Ghana, Sam discovered a new appreciation and gratitude for the strides his parents made to get to America. Samuel wants to continue to explore internationally and continue to grow as a young aspiring professional by taking on new challenges in different countries.

After traveling to different corners of the globe, Samuel has a greater passion for international work. His remaining courses as a senior are macroeconomics, urban economics, money and banking. He recognizes that interning with KDM allows him to analyze public policy, refine his communication, and networking skills. Sam is excited for the new challenges that KDM presents as each task helps him gain exposure to the business world, and better prepare him for his transition from College to the “real world”, and the Future of Work.