Small Town Values, a Strong Work Ethic and Career Turning Points: Rick Wagner's Rise to CEO

Welcome to Humble Beginnings, a podcast where we uncover the unconventional, more relatable, path to success. In this show, we'll share the stories before the C-suite support members' shifts to deployments. The story is of various upbringing, first jobs, career pivots, educational uncertainties, and more. This is the place to hear about their lives from the Gulf Khan and the Qudiz themselves. We hope you enjoy. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Humble Beginnings. I'm your host Amanda Zieta, and our guest today is Rick Wagner, CEO of Agile Defense. Thank you so much for being here today, Rick. It's great to be here, Amanda. All right. As we typically do on our show, we start with your background. I'd love to start by asking about the small town that you grew up in, St. Mary's, Pennsylvania, which I had to look it up. Even today, it has a population of under 13,000 people, according to the most recent census. Tell us a bit about your upbringing here and what the town and its people are like. Yeah, St. Mary's is a very interesting place. Actually, when I grew up there, it was only about 5,000 people. It was actually my uncle and a few of the people that were part of the city council who found out that if they expanded the city limits, they could get to over 10,000, which would classify them as a city and they got things from the state and the federal government to that. I always look back at that. St. Mary's is actually the second largest city in Pennsylvania by Randmas. It's 100 square mile and it took 100 square miles to get to that 10,000 people mark. An example of innovative thinking by the people there on how they could make this town work because, frankly, World War II, it was a boom town. It was a town they had what's called "cintered metal." They would press metal and they made fairly high quality parts really quickly. During World War II, that was a big deal. They were actually one of the factories that made lots of starter motors for equipment and things like that. After World War II and then the car industry downturn in the 70s, the town was slowly getting less and less work. It was a real change because people normally grew up and went to high school. Not too many people went to college and they went to work in a factory and they lived a nice light. They hunted, they fished. They did a lot of outdoors kind of things because it's in the middle of the National Forest. It was one of those kind of places. The title of this is "Humble Beginnings." It's a very humble town, hardworking people who work hard, play hard. It was a great place to grow up. It was really good values. I think that's how I think about it. It's a great town. Awesome. I understand you also have a very large family built on those similar strong work values. What was your family like and how did work play a role? My big extended family. My father was one of ten and my mother ate one of five. All those aunts and uncles, big part of my upbringing. Personally, my dad's family, which was local to Saint Mary's. He was one of the youngest in this family. A lot of older uncles and I had cousins who were older than my dad. We still have a family reunion. We just had one a couple of months ago. There will be 150 to 200 people come to family reunion because there's about five generations from my grandparents down now. They're always a lot of fun. It's funny. You get back together with cousins from a long time ago growing up. This was funny on your other podcast. The person he said he grew up as a rookie. There's Ricky and Bobby and Polly and Dougy and it's funny. We're all much older now and we're calling ourselves by our childhood. I think they have a lot of fun. I remember thinking some of the uncles that I had especially died in an uncle who was a master sergeant in the army. He scared me when I was little. I realized he was just a really serious guy who did serious things in life. He was a people out in World War II when he was 17 years old and went to Korea and Vietnam. An uncle who was the general manager of the factory. My dad had a good job at one of those factories where you loved the maintenance department. It was really about like I said, you work really hard and then you play really hard. And did you work in your youth? Yes. A little bit. I was into sports and my dad supported that. But I did have a subcontractor to the Mexican on the paper route just because I thought it was cool to deliver papers. I don't know what to pay. He probably paid me like a dime or something. And I would deliver his papers form. He was a little entrepreneur. That was another lesson learned. It's like you want to be the guy in charge because it's no fun being a subcontractor. That's a subcontractor. That's a really funny way of putting it. So what did growing up in a small factory town in a rather big family teach you and what did it make you want to or not want in your own life? Want to become or not want to become? Yeah. I think early in life like anybody, you know, you have these kind of grandiose views of what you want to do. I wanted to be a professional athlete. But as you get older, you realize how hard those things are. And I thought about, do I really want to work in the factories here in town? Thankfully my parents, you know, they were middle class. But they were very supportive of college. And there was them in Columbia College. But I remember kind of seeing the factory life and thinking, I want more than that. And I love my hometown. But you know, I, that was not, it just didn't seem like the place where I wanted to spend my adult life. And so I pretty quickly focused. I was like, all right, I'm going to have to do good in school. I'm going to want to go to college. And so that became my focus is like, how do I find that best college experience that can really set me up? Yeah, what kind of student were you growing up in grade school and high school and aside from sports, were you interested in any particular areas of study? Yeah, so I was a good student growing up. I was selecting grade school. I was highest average. I was really strong in math. It wasn't necessarily what was interested me the most. I actually had a cousin who had grown up and become a lawyer. He was about, he was actually a substitute teacher when I was in first grade and he was my teacher. And so I kind of looked up to him because he had gone to college and found his niche. And so that's what I thought I was going to do. Over time, you know, that changed though. But all through grade school, high school, I was top 1% of my class in high school. And so it was very clear I was going to go to college. So that ended up being a big decision point for me in life. She said, what do I want to go to college? Where do I want to go? What path do I want to take in terms of exactly what I was going to do? Well, take us through that. Those decisions kind of, you know, how did you end up going to the college that you ended up going to and what were some important factors in those decision making processes? Yeah, it was my first really big decision in life. And given that my parents hadn't gone to college, they were, again, supportive, but they pretty much let me make the decision. And so I was in this kind of weird place where I was being a security to play football by colleges. And I had some division one offers, but none of them was full scholarships. And then I got a full scholarship academically to go to the University of Pittsburgh. And you know, given financial situation, that was definitely the best choice for me. And I'm happy that I made that choice. There were some others that probably could have been equally as good. But in Githubin, it was the 70s moving into the 80s. It was very big focus on engineering. Everything was, like I had guidance counsels. Everybody were, they were all in my ear. You got to go to engineering school. And so I kind of put the legal thing on the side and went to pit for electrical engineering. It was, it was an interesting transition, right? Because I found myself in something that I wasn't super excited about. I had kind of given up sports, which was such a big piece of my life. And it was a little bit of a struggle for me. I struggled through school. I got b's and c's my first semester, which was, I was used to getting a's and everything. It a B M Ratt was like, that was like almost an existential crisis for me. It's like, how do they need to be in a math class? And then I kind of struggled even harder. And it just kind of became a difficult time for me. Right? I couldn't figure out why I didn't have excitement. through what I was doing. But thankfully, I had some good professors and met one who became sort of a mentor for me and got me focused and I was able to kind of pull out of that and started getting aes and beans towards the end. So ended up graduating with my engineering degree. I joke about it. It's like I finished them in the top half of my class because the bottom half all shaled out. It's a very challenging major and an area of study, especially when it's not, you know, you don't have that much passion for it, which is hard to even have in college, you know, passion for. So yeah, that sounds like a very challenging time. - Yeah, it was a big learning experience for me that sometimes things may not be exactly what you want, but you got to work hard and figure out a path through that. And that was, you know, in learning how to say it, right? 'Cause I'd never failed really anything before that. And so that was another big, it quite experienced for me. - At a young age too, kind of, you're vulnerable in college, right? You're still learning and figuring yourself out. So. - I went to college in '17. So I was already a little younger than most of the kids in my class and so probably a little bit immature. - For sure, yeah, as we all were. (laughs) Did you have to work at all during college? Is that a factor in your academic life too? - Yeah, so summer jobs were interesting. Actually, I didn't talk about the work, right? So I went there on a full academic scholarship, well, when you don't get A's and B's, you don't keep the scholarship. So I lost the scholarship. Took out a few loans, but then worked through the summers. And I had some interesting summer jobs. I was a flier delivery person. I went to what delivered flowers, which that was kind of fun sometimes, 'cause you're delivering flowers to people and right. They enjoy that. It worked in a factory doing, it was an industrial auction and actually drove heavy equipment for that. Probably would have been bad if OSHA or anybody would find one. It's like an easy didn't know how to do this stuff, but I was somebody who didn't mind trying new things. So when they offered that somebody could drive the bulldozer or the four-cliff, I'm like, "I'm in, let me do it." And so those jobs were really fun. Yeah, that's interesting. Before we move on to entering or professional your life after college, tell us a bit about what overcoming these challenges in college meant to you, what did the experience of not particularly selling in college after obviously selling academically before college? What did it teach you about yourself or how to move forward? Yeah, for me, I often said this, that having the ability to fail at something and then learn how to push through that and succeed is a great skill that not everybody has. I work with some of the top engineering companies in the US. And I often work with people who, let's say we're working on a proposal and we lose. They're in their first program manager job and it's not going well. And I look at their background and it's like, "Well, they've been straight A's all the way to your college. "We're handpicked by these companies to come in "because of their potential." And now, at this point in their life, they're having their first crisis of maybe not quite being the best. I got to experience that in the academic environment and it's not quite as difficult a place because I could recover from that. Sometimes in the workforce though, it's really hard to recover from making some of those first mistakes. So for me, I saw it as a great advantage to have gone through that. I often use that discussion around that to talk to people about what it's like. 'Cause you basically have to sit down and assess. It's like, "All right, why is this happening "and get to the root cause?" Maybe it was a good thing I was an engineering 'cause it teaches those kind of skills of analyzing and doing root cause analysis. I think that's, for me, was how I dealt with that that failure is trying to get to the root cause. And I realized it was because I didn't have a lot of passion for what I was doing. And I think later in life, I realized that if I'm gonna do something, I better have a lot of passion for it. - Hmm, yep, that makes sense. Or hate. So you graduated. How did you get your start professionally after college? What was your very first job and how'd you land that? - I started interviewing and I was getting offers to work in my hometown at some of the factories. And I got an offer in Ohio to work through the Air Force. But I had a friend who went to California and I really wanted to go to California. And so eventually I got a job, civil service job with the Navy in a place called Corwinini, the California, just North of Los Angeles. And I kind of jumped all over that job. Even though it was a fairly low-bang job, or I put myself in that position to not excelling in college. And I said, well, it's a, I have passion for being in California. So that's important, right? Do be somewhere, do something with passion for. So I took that job and moved to California, drove across the country with a rider truck and a big adventure. 'Cause I hadn't been all that many places in the country at that point. I'd basically only been one state, more than one state away from Pennsylvania one time prior to leaving there. So I just took that as a big adventure and went off and took that first job with the Navy. - Wow, that's really cool. How did working in the Navy in this area kind of differ from your hometown environment? Was there a transition period where did you automatically really love it? - From a lifestyle standpoint, there couldn't have been anything much different. Being on the coast and Southern California, it was kind of like what I had seen in the movies. We played beach volleyball and horror. It was, I kind of got back to where I was, right? Playing a lot of sports, working hard. My first job in the Navy was testing evaluation of weapons systems on Navy ships and I traveled all over the Atlantic and the Pacific's going to dips and running tasks and doing wide missile firings. It was really a lot of fun. It did that for about five years. And I learned what it was like to sacrifice. Naval ships, that's a hard life. And I would go out for two weeks. I think I'm going out for four weeks one time, which seemed like the longest timeframe in my life, spending four weeks at sea. And the sailors were spending six months at sea. And so it taught me a lot about the kind of sacrifices that the military makes. - So how did your career progress after this job? And I know that's kind of a big question, but if there was any certain opportunities that came about in unique or interesting ways or that really made an impact on you. - Yeah, after five years of being at sea, I transitioned into a more land-based job. But I spent 13 years as an Navy's twin. And again, not in DC. So for those out there who are civil service in DC, there's a big difference when you're out in the country like that. There were not a lot of high grade jobs where I was at. So there wasn't a lot of potential. And so I enjoyed that time, but there came a point where I realized that living in Southern California and not having a lot of opportunity for advancement, I needed to find something different. And so after 13 years I transitioned, I went to work for a company called Standard Missile Company. I had worked on the Standard Missile with the Navy. And so this was a company that built them. And I transitioned as a GS12, so it was fairly easy transition for me to go and become a contractor. And that was eye-opening for me, right? Because very different to work for a contractor as opposed to work with the government. And I enjoyed the change of probably here back to DC. And that's where I started my contract for career. And I understand you had a bit of a career, life-turning point shortly after September 11, 2001. And you were in the process of getting your master's degree. Tell us about this transition and this experience, so what I meant to you in your career. - Yeah, so I had a couple of jobs within contractors. I'd gone from Standard Missile Company to Lockheed Martin. And then I eventually ended up at TASC. And I started supporting the CIA. And this was just before 9/11. So I had been a contractor for about five years. And we had lost a reconheat. And so I'd went back to the company and it was working on St. Proposals. And that's when 9/11 happens. And I remember the place that I had worked as a contractor there for CIA was heavily involved. And I knew that. And I just wanted to get back into it. I know people who remember 9/11 who were in the workforce, it was just kind of a galvanizing moment. I needed to get back to some place where I could make an impact. So I was able to find a contract to go through. and win. So it became a real turning point for me on a couple levels, right? Because it got me back into a role on-site with customer. But it also kind of lit that spark of the competition of writing proposals and trying to win new work. So I see that as kind of like the, it was the start of the next phase of my career where I went from being an individual contributor to being a leader in terms of the business. And so that, that to me was a huge starting point. It's interesting because I've interviewed a lot of executives. I feel like that around September 11 had similar experiences. And I'm sure it's just that generation of where you were at that time. But it seems to be that kind of turning point. I want to make a difference, especially in GovCon, of course, because that is where you're involved. So it was a 24/7 job. I wore a pager that went off in the middle of the night all the time. But I loved it. And I spent seven years there. So from 2001 to 2008. And you couldn't drag me out of that place. And I kept being asked to take this promotion or that promotion or to come back and work full time and there's a development. And I kept saying, no, no, no, I'm exactly right. I need to be on built in this team. Eventually, though, after seven years, I realized there's a lot of opportunity that I'm passing up. And we had done a lot of the things that we set out to do in terms of after 9/11 to, you know, this sounds cliche. But to make the world a safer place, which was what we were doing. And I got the opportunity. I still remember that day because when I finally decided that it was, I had a new customer had come in. And he was asking me some questions about how we do things. And he said to me, hey, you know, do you ever thought about doing this? And I'm like, oh, yeah, we tried that. That doesn't work. And I had like a light ball thrown off my head. And I said, I'd become that guy, right? On the guy who's like been here seven years, I know everything. I think I know everything anyway. I'm not open to new ideas because I feel like we've done everything. And I looked at him and I said, I got to go. And he goes, what do you mean? You got to meet me? Go to him. I said, no, no, I need to go do something different. I built a steam or a good team. They need to go on. You need you have new ideas. Go work that. I'm going to go back to my company and do other things. I stay connected with that guy for quite some time because, you know, we he appreciated the fact that I self realized that that I wasn't adding value any longer in his role. And he actually went on to be a career coach for people. And we talked about that over times. You know, it's like the importance of, you know, understanding your place and whether or not you're of value where you're at. So how did you, you know, when you left, where did you take your career after that? And ultimately, how'd you land, you know, as the CEO of the company? Yeah. Went back to my boss when I said, I just borrowed myself as PM. And so I'm going to need to come back here and work. And he basically looked at me and said, well, if you're not on site and you better be winning the business and building a business. And at that point, that was the point in my career where I kind of changed. And said, all right, I'm going to work on proposals. I'm going to build a business. And there was a team of us that worked together. And we want a lot of proposals and built a lot. And we all got promoted. And we just, we just kept, kept growing the company and getting promoted. And I get promoted several times. And eventually the task was being sold. And I find my, but that was kind of my next critical point. I found myself where because of that, my integration of two companies, I was going to be out of a, out of a, right of a role, right? And that was something that was, that was tough to deal with. 16 years of that company and then all of a sudden they weren't going to need me anymore. And I had to go awesome and find something new to do. But I found that that challenge all on the way. I ended up leaving there and going to ManTech and that became another place where I was able to grow my career and do a lot of good things. And so I found that challenge to be something that was, um, emotivated me. And how did all these, you know, different roles throughout your career? Um, these opportunities that you kind of jumped into. How do they prepare you for the role you have today to lead a company? What was interesting for me is that the last few years of task I moved about every year, right? I was a Navy business unit and I was the DOD leader. And I became chief strategy officer. Then when we merged with Injullity, I took a role, kind of like a chief administrative officer. I was in charge of finance and security and contracts. For me, it taught me broadly how companies work. I think that was the first time where I first started thinking, you know, maybe someday I'd like to be a CEO. And I got the ability to learn how all of those functional areas in the company work, which were areas that I probably earlier in my career, shied away from because to me, the inner program manager and being a general manager was that was where I was interested in going and running the business because, unless you're the CEO, you don't really get to run a chunk of the business unless you're in those roles. So that's the fact that I was willing to take on new things. I moved from Intel to DOD and took over the business that edged some civilian work in it. That ended up being something that made me very, very marketable to larger roles. How has mission also continued to play a role in your career? It's clear, you know, how we talked about 9/11 being one of those standout transition moments for you. But you joined the workforce out of college into service, into the Navy. So how has that kind of followed you throughout your career, that passion for the mission? I mentioned my uncle who was the master floor agent, I think. And then I had other uncles who fought in wars and cousins. So I think for a permanent early time, even though I didn't choose to go into military service itself, I think that connection to people who had done that and everything. It just spoke, it put gave me a focus on those things. And then 9/11 just really really cemented that for me. And I don't know that I would be happy doing anything where I didn't have some connection to that. And I really, even at Microsoft where I was in a large commercial company, right? It was the federal business. And so it was strongly connected. Yeah, and I like the draw connections too. It's interesting hearing someone's journey in life in this kind of condensed format. You were talking about, you know, how one of your uncles was running one of the factories in town. And you took lots of odd jobs in college and before college and different roles and things that you didn't even know that you could do, but you just jumped into them. I often ask, did you ever think that you'd become a CEO of a company? But it's cool because when you see the trajectory of your life and where you kind of started, these elements seem like they've always kind of been there. You know, it's interesting that leadership can take many forms. And it's not always the formal leadership. And sometimes it's just that you're a leader. Like I said, I was never a manager in those 13 years I worked in the government, but I always led teams. I always people gravitated towards seeing me as the leader. One as in college, I played rugby. And after the first year, the guy who was kind of the coach of the team, he graduated. Everybody's looking around like who's the next coach? Because it was the club sports and there wasn't the university wasn't paying for it. And they all looked at me. And like, like, you'd be like, I'm like, I've only done this for a year. Why me? And it's like, well, you seem to be picking it up faster than any of it. So, so I began the coach and the team at that point. And I think it's it's having that willingness to go ahead and step up and be a leader that is that's what creates levers, right? Because none of us are born leaders. I mean, you hear that term, natural born leader. I don't believe that's true. I don't think anybody's born leader. It's just some people are willing to take it and run with it and others are not. Yeah, you don't have to be surrounded by CEOs and executives, you know, growing up to to have those that that value instilled to you as well comes to different places. So how would you kind of describe your leadership role or your leadership style today based on your experiences and have mentors play to role in that? Yeah. I think for me, the best leaders that I worked for who have been mentors for me have been the type that enabled you, empowered you, gave you the ability to make decisions, gave you enough rope that you could make those decisions and allowed you to even maybe make a few mistakes here and there. And so I tend to be the same way. I want to set up strong leadership under me. I'm always happy when when people who works for me get promoted and move on because that's that's what I think my role is just to create future leaders. And when I do that, then my own organization, it just makes the organization not much better. And I've been in some situations where people would rather have followers working for them. I'd rather have leaders working for me. Well, Rick, I know this is kind of a hard question. But what is next for you or where do you still hope to accomplish personally or professionally? Because being the CEO is in youth, if you like, the be-all and all of careers. But clearly, I've learned through this industry, it's not. Well, I've tried to have a very diverse life, right? I'm involved in charities. I sit on a commission for Fairfax County. So for me, I see kind of all those things being ways in which I can contribute. So I don't, you know, I love working at edge of events. And I'm really excited about where we're taking the company and how it's growing and the missions we're supporting. And so I'm really good where I'm at. And I think I'll take this to its logical conclusion. And at this point, I still have a lot of excitement for the career. I mean, would love to continue it. But I also have a lot of things that I could go to be in terms of, you know, that volunteer work or something in the local government. So I feel really, really excited about whatever the future is. Awesome. Well, wonderful. I think that's a wonderful note to end on. I'm really, thank you so much for sharing a bit about your story and your journey. The transitional moments of your life, too, I think are so important for aspiring leaders to hear and kind of relate to. So thank you for being here. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for listening to this episode of Humphle Beginnings. Check out WashingtonExec.com to find more of our podcasts and profiles on executives. See you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]