Breaking Down SBIR & STTR Programs with Kristina Botelho

Kristina Botelho [00:00:00]:
I think leadership needs to encourage that creative agency, get contracting officers uncomfortable, like, ask tough questions and see what they're really doing on their part to look into the best path forward instead of having it given to them.

Intro [00:00:16]:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Through our blood and your bonds, we crushed the Germans before he got here. You and I have a rendezvous with destin.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:34]:
Christina Bottello. How are you, my dear?

Kristina Botelho [00:00:37]:
Good. And how are you?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:38]:
I'm doing good. I'm actually really excited. I'm coming off of a week vacation, and when I say vacation, like, I didn't go anywhere, right? But I closed my laptop for a whole week and I tried to turn off my phone for a whole week, so I'm, like, feeling the high.

Kristina Botelho [00:00:51]:
Yeah, I did the same. I did log in twice, but yesterday I was getting the itch to just come back to work.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:59]:
So I really appreciate you wanting to talk to me today. We'll do a quick intro in a second, but I think your perspective in particular will resonate with a lot of people and a lot of the themes and topics we talk about here on the podcast, particularly because I feel like you are a defense maverick in the.

Kristina Botelho [00:01:19]:
Wild, like, you're out there.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:01:21]:
You are a practicing contracting officer in the air force. I'm not going to steal your thunder, but you are one of the few people I've met who are doing it and doing it right. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit. So let's start with you. Give us a quick rundown on who you are, what's your background and how you kind of came into the seat you're sitting. And we won't get into how we cross paths. We haven't known each other that long.

Kristina Botelho [00:01:44]:
But we know we haven't. Feels like we have, but we haven't. So I am a contracting officer and agreements officer for almost 15 years now. Kind of fell into this role, created it out of thin air. A few years ago, they asked for volunteers to help award some NW strat buys. I ended up getting one. That was a tough one, but it was also Dr. Roper's number one priority.

Kristina Botelho [00:02:12]:
So at 30 days to go, we went through a lot of obstacles working with afworks, and we got it done on time. And then they were like, hey, you seem to know a thing or two. Would you mind train our spark cells? So I started training them, and then eventually the other side of appworks, the agility prime side, heard about me, and they're like, would you mind executing some contracts for us? Sure. So gradually now I just show up at events, and people who need contracting support seek me out, and I'll either end up providing them training on how they can do it themselves or, worst case scenario, I can execute for. I primarily stick to air force contracts, but occasionally color outside the lines and go DoD or DARPA, other agencies. Wow.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:05]:
Your entire career has been with the Air Force?

Kristina Botelho [00:03:08]:
Yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:08]:
Okay. But it sounds like you moved around a little bit.

Kristina Botelho [00:03:11]:
Yeah, I've always been at Handscom Air Force Base, but I've moved around to several different program offices. I started this as kind of like a side hustle on top of my normal program. And then last year they're like, hey, we should probably do this like full tie. So now I'm in a rapidx, career broadening position, so I get to dedicate all my time to bringing innovation to contracting and helping train other contracting officers to just have the right mindset to get things done faster and smarter.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:45]:
Is that how you were able to, you described, you kind of get to pick your customers and what projects you want to execute. Does it have to fall under that scope you just mentioned where because of this rapid x program, you have some discretion?

Kristina Botelho [00:04:00]:
Yeah, I do. I have complete discretion. Everyone thinks I work for afworks because I do so much for them, but I'm actually not an employee of afworks. I fall under PeO digital at AFL CMC, and I support all of Hans command Force base. So that's peo digital and the c three ISR division directorate as well. And they're in handscom innovation team that they have on base. So they do a lot of events and small business outreach and things of that nature. So I provide them support.

Kristina Botelho [00:04:31]:
But then when I'm at other events, like prodacity or the innovation industry days or AFA, I come across those who are just running into contracting obstacles and we talk through it. And sometimes that ends up just being a talk, a discussion. Sometimes I go back and I create some training for them. Other times I end up executing for them, like the Blue Horizons fellowship. That's a direct report to the chief of staff. I met them at AFA, and I thought I was just helping a bunch of guys with their school projects, and then it turned into me performing all the execution for the fellowship for the years following. And I didn't know at the time that they were a direct report to the chief of staff until the final briefing came at the end of their fellowship. So they do some really cool, exciting stuff.

Kristina Botelho [00:05:24]:
But I'm just here to help those that don't have that contracting expertise or support.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:05:31]:
What a super cool position. Sorry to be in where not only you get to choose what project you want to work on, what customer you support, you're also in this coaching role and mentoring role and where you're trying to teach others and lead a pathway for them to follow. What kinds of obstacles or challenges do you see most often when people are reaching out to you from that coaching or mentoring side?

Kristina Botelho [00:05:55]:
Mostly a lack of experience. Siber sitter is the new hot thing. It's not really new to us anymore, but over the last few years it's become a very important part of the product lifecycle. It's a major player. And contracting officers are not being trained on sipper setter. It's not included in our warrant boards, none that I've seen recently. So when it comes up, when you're trying to make those sipper phase three awards or those phase two stratfi Tac fives, these contracting officers are not familiar with the policies and guidance that's out there. And there's nothing in the foreign dfars that tells you how to do a SIpr sitter.

Kristina Botelho [00:06:37]:
Yeah.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:06:37]:
You mentioned also that you were recently at prodacity. Didn't you do a presentation on siber sitter contracting?

Kristina Botelho [00:06:44]:
I did, yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:06:45]:
What kinds of things did you. So this is mostly an industry audience. There might have been some government. So what kinds of things were you telling industry or that you were promoting from a messaging standpoint about cibbersitter?

Kristina Botelho [00:06:57]:
So with industry, I find they're most interested in the transparency piece of things. They have a very hard time getting straight answers from the government, honest answers about their technology, their capabilities, about how to get things done. So really, when I'm talking to industry, I'm telling them one. First of all, always read all your solicitation documentation. Go to the point of contacts that they tell you to go to. But you also have to be annoying and you have to stay on top of things because the government is there to help and support you through the process. This is supposed to be helping small businesses, startup companies, develop commercial products that can strengthen our national defense industrial base. So it's our job to really make sure that they're successful and to help them as much as we possibly can.

Kristina Botelho [00:07:52]:
We are all overworked, overtaxed, whatever the case may be. But I have a lot of enjoyment out of helping small businesses succeed and helping them through the minute tasks such as wide area workflow and other problem areas that no one's there to help them with. No one's talking to them about how to get an ATO. No one's talking to them about their security requirement. So they're going into these programs with these great capabilities, but guess what? No one wants it because it doesn't have an ATO, so it can't go on our system. And they don't even know that. That's the problem.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:28]:
I would also offer most of the government in general, or the DoD, probably. They don't know how to optimize the siber sitters out there. I think Air force is definitely leading the way in terms of trying to put money towards phase one and phase twos. But that transition to phase three, as you well know, is quite the plight that we have not given. You mentioned transparency. We have not been given a very clear glide path to that phase three transition partner. It kind of goes, maybe not full circle, but you started with talking about how on the government side, contracting officers really don't know how to do this. We're not trained to do it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:12]:
It's mostly experiential learning. Do you agree with that?

Kristina Botelho [00:09:15]:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:16]:
How did you start learning about, like, when. When did that really start to end.

Kristina Botelho [00:09:20]:
Up bringing to your career? So when afworks took over the sippersitter portfolio, I first did one of their contracting sprints with them in San Antonio. So it was right before COVID hit. It was the last one they did in person, and we awarded over 500 contracts in four days. So that was my first deep dive into supercenter.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:44]:
I see. That was under Dr. Rober, right? Yes, I remember the fanfare. Not a bad thing. I didn't mean that in a bad way. And then. So you have a lack of competency on the government side on how to even procure phase one, two, or three, and then on the industry side, like you said, you have to kind of be annoying just in order to navigate what the heck is going on between phases and who your pocs are, how to get good feedback, how to understand.

Kristina Botelho [00:10:11]:
What an ATO is.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:10:12]:
So have you in your seat, have you seen or done despite those challenges.

Kristina Botelho [00:10:18]:
Fight the challenges because you're still getting stuff done, right? I do. Yeah, I do. I get asked what my secret sauce is a lot, and I'm not entirely sure that I've pinpointed it. I think it has a lot to do with my responsiveness and transparency. Willing to talk to people and give them honest feedback and be truthful with them about the situation, whereas there are a lot of people that are risk adverse. I think risk is probably the biggest thing. Contracting officers aren't being trained well enough to understand risk when it comes to communicating with industry. There are those better buying power things that come out and say, no, just keep talking to industry.

Kristina Botelho [00:11:01]:
But I got calls from other contractors who have said, oh, the RFI was due, and now they're not talking to anyone. They're done their market research. And I'm like, has this solicitation been released? They're like, no, and they're not done the market research.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:11:18]:
Yeah.

Kristina Botelho [00:11:19]:
So it's really education and getting contracting officers out there and just, they have to be more involved with the mission.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:11:29]:
So at 15 years in, that's a lot of experience. But you understand pretty clearly what your left and right limits are and where you can take appropriate risk and not take appropriate. That's what I'm hearing as a fellow practitioner.

Kristina Botelho [00:11:42]:
Yeah. I don't just go around pencil whipping contracts and throwing things together. You talk to any policy or lawyers that's reviewed my files, and they are as clean as they can get. I know my boundaries and I know how to reach out for help when I need help, I don't look for something to tell me I can't do it. That's another big issue I see on these boards all the time, people looking for contracting advice, and they're like, can you tell me where it says I can do this? Tell me where it says you can.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:12:14]:
That's awesome.

Kristina Botelho [00:12:15]:
Yeah. So think that. And just being willing to take those risks, I mean, you are afraid. Use your lawyers, use your peers. Get with other people. See what other people are doing. There's some resources out there that you don't have to go it alone.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:12:33]:
So let's do a little bit more of a deep dive on sibersitter. I, too, believe it's an area where we are underutilizing some potential, not just capability, but in terms of rapid contracting, procurement, execution. That should be, like, one of the first things you look for in your market research, in my opinion. There's also, I would say, some. I don't know if this is miseducation or just, to your point, no lack of education. Understanding the true power behind the SBA policy that says if you have any silver sitter at any phase, you've met the standard of competition, because that is a big deal.

Kristina Botelho [00:13:15]:
Right.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:16]:
So how do you message these types of things? Or let's start with, from your vantage point, what's the value of silversitter? Either as a contracting practitioner or as someone who's just kind of watching people do mission. And then how do you execute under that SBA policy that says you've met the standard of competition? So how does that truly speed up your lead times?

Kristina Botelho [00:13:40]:
So that is hard for a lot of contracting officers to wrap their head around. Surprisingly, determining price reasonableness is a lot harder than cost analysis for a lot of contracting officers. They still want the complete breakdown of every cost element, the labor hours, the rates, every nook and cranny, every screw, every bolt. And they want to see all the costs as if it was a far 15, two compliant Tina, and then they want to do a cost analysis on it. And they need to understand that the super sitter program is for commercialization of technology. So right there, commercialization. Nine tenths out of ten, you're operating in a commercial world. So you're going to be doing a price analysis, and you need to understand what a price analysis looks like compared to a cost analysis.

Kristina Botelho [00:14:37]:
We're still stewards of the taxpayer. You still have to make sure you're paying a fair and reasonable price, or an OT, just a reasonable price. Not going to get into those differences.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:14:48]:
The fact that you pointed out that nuance makes you my best friend.

Kristina Botelho [00:14:52]:
Right. So it's. But it is nuances like that that people don't recognize and they just carry over what they know without expanding their knowledge. Like, I know what I know, and that's good enough. And that's not good enough. Things change all the time.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:15:08]:
Does the air force make you do A-J-A justification and approval for your.

Kristina Botelho [00:15:16]:
No, it doesn't. No. Okay. So I have some great templates up front, and I've always been a big proponent of. I shouldn't have to tell you what's not in the file. If you're reviewing my file, because you should know if the file is this, then it's not going to have these things. But I also understand that sometimes it's just easier to tell them what's not going to be in there and why. So I have some great templates for my sibbers that say, okay, you're not going to get a synopsis, you're not going to get a jna, you're not going to see a market research report.

Kristina Botelho [00:15:48]:
And it just lists all these things and the references, the policy references, so that I don't get my files. And I could throw one of those in every file. So it's great.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:15:58]:
Well, the reason I picked on that, because that's one of the more common things I've seen so far is when you start to go down the siber route and the contracting professional is open to the path and they're starting to understand it. And then because you're dealing with one vendor, they immediately default to a JNA. Yes, a sole source JNA. And it's like, no, that's not. No, no. Even though, yes, you're working with one on one. Remember, go back to that SBA policy. Remember, you've met the standard of competition.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:16:29]:
And that part I've also found really weird on the solutions marketplace side, when we try and teach people what the solutions marketplace is under trade rooms, it's very similar to phase three, siber contracting. A lot of tectonic parallels, and people wig out. It's weird. Especially what you said about doing their own price reasonableness determination. I point blank had somebody tell me they'd rather do a source selection and get competitive pricing than do their own price analysis, I was stunned. I was like, what?

Kristina Botelho [00:17:06]:
Yeah, it really is insane to me. Even the civil policy, further justification is not required. And they're like, yeah, but it doesn't say that in the far.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:17:20]:
What a shame, because that just adds, like, time and money. And I feel like it's just a huge waste potentially, when somebody needs something now or they want to get after something now.

Kristina Botelho [00:17:34]:
Yeah, I work with a lot of really great lawyers and policy reviewers, which you don't hear a lot working in the DoD, but I've been blessed. We have a great crew at Hanscom Air Force base, super supportive, super smart, on the edge of innovation, willing to take risks. So I've been lucky in that sense to have that backup support to help me on my journey and help me not fall over the cliff when I'm pushing to the edge.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:18:06]:
When you're dealing with a company, or if a customer comes to you and says, like, hey, I found this capability, I want to understand what my options are, or maybe they're still doing market research. I think every Ko's question should be, do you have a siber?

Kristina Botelho [00:18:22]:
Yes, and it always is. So I always ask, do they have siber? And if they don't have a siber, are they any specific socioeconomic group under small business? Yeah, those are my two.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:18:35]:
So where do you see opportunity under the Siber program, where maybe it sounds like you're taking advantage of this, but how do we grow the opportunity to be beyond an individual like yourself?

Kristina Botelho [00:18:47]:
I think it's more about communication from leadership down. So sadly, not sadly, really. But, like, sipper, sitter doesn't require acquisition strategies, so you're not going to go in front of an acquisition strategy panel. If you are awarding a spare, local policy may ask you to do that. But if it was required, which it may be under army, I just know for the air force, it's not. One of the questions should be, did you look at like. That should be one of the questions that your peo and leadership should be asking you. Have you looked at Supercitter to see if this technology exists? There.

Kristina Botelho [00:19:28]:
There's the Siber database of awards you can search by keyword. It's not great, but it's something. There's also a new platform coming out, ignite under the vision platform. So all the DoD services are connected to vision, where they enter their projects. And ignite allows Sipper and sitter contract awardees from the last five years to enter their super sitter information so that it can marry it up to whatever projects are being entered in so that these airmen will know right away, hey, this company might actually be able to meet your capability. Yeah.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:20:07]:
And once you find, let's say you find a capability, they do have a phase two Siber, one or two, but you're really looking for two and you're ready to execute. Can you talk a little bit about the whole extends, derides or completes the siber and what that means to you as a practitioner and how you apply that to your awards and your contracts?

Kristina Botelho [00:20:31]:
Yeah. So in order to award a phase three sipper, the work under that contract must derive from, extend or complete the work that was done under the phase one or the phase two. It doesn't have to be both. More importantly, phase one or phase two does not have to be successfully completed. They could have bombed. And that's okay, because that's what prototyping and innovation is about, failure. But if they were to derive that technology that bombed and try to make it do something else, then that would be a sipper, phase three, or maybe if they were going to complete the technology, fix whatever it was, or just it didn't get through final production to production in the phase two, that would be you completing it. And same with extending it.

Kristina Botelho [00:21:24]:
Now you're just extending the use of this technology. So, I mean, derives from, I think is where you can pretty much drive a truck through. Extend and complete are pretty succinct in what you have to be doing. But there are so many opportunities. It can be o m, it can be continuing rdt e. It can be production, it can be any. And there's no dollar limit. There's no time limit.

Kristina Botelho [00:21:53]:
Right. There's no limit on the number of awards. I can award a super phase three from an army sipper as an air force contracting officer. So if the army awarded a sipper phase two, I can make a phase three award based on that. People don't understand that cross agency applies as well. Oh, wow.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:22:12]:
And who has, I'll say, the discretion on what extends, derives, or completes. Who's determining this is an extension of a sipper phase two or et cetera.

Kristina Botelho [00:22:26]:
Ultimately, it's the contracting officer. But I always ask my requirements guys to help me out with that because, I mean, some of this is above my capability.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:22:37]:
Technical. Yeah.

Kristina Botelho [00:22:39]:
No, I'm not going to pretend to understand it, but they can put it to me in layman's terms so that I can communicate it on paper and understand how it drives. Extent or complete.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:22:50]:
Yeah. That's the point I was hoping you would drive home is that there's no definitions out there. Right. There's no piece of paper telling you how to put these puzle pieces together. You, as the contracting officer have total, and this is very similar to the OT world of the transaction authority as well.

Kristina Botelho [00:23:12]:
Yeah. And they don't even necessarily define what derive, extend, or complete is in the super sitter policy document. Right. It's just common sense, like, you know, how you derive things, you know how you complete things. There's no standards that you have to meet, no thresholds. So it is. It's complete discretion of the contracting officer.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:23:36]:
And I think that's one of the missed opportunities in terms of us underutilizing a pathway like siber sitter to help accelerate our capability delivery. What other, I don't know, misnomers or common themes that you see out there where you think people are kind of applying this or thinking about this backwards.

Kristina Botelho [00:23:58]:
So people don't understand phase three, idiqs and how they can be utilized across stage during prodacity. I explained how you can take advantage of other people's hard work, such as mine. I have a bunch of really great decentralized indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity sipper phase three contracts that were stood up in support of autonomy prime, but they're available to anyone in the DoD who wants to take advantage of it. So we have drones, we have the continuous Atos software devsecops, all these great sources that are already on contract. All the hard work is done. If you want to place an order against it, they're there for you to do it, and there's no further work for you to do. You don't have to make any determinations. And then Stratfi Tacfi, that's another one.

Kristina Botelho [00:25:01]:
People have a hard time understanding how to capture private investment.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:06]:
Let's talk about that. What is that? Because I don't know if a lot of people know what that is and what vendors are really going after when they're applying for those opportunities.

Kristina Botelho [00:25:18]:
So under stratify TACFI, there is a option. Well, stratfy, you have to have third party investment. Under stratfy, it's a one to one to two. So that means they will provide sipper dollars matching the government agency dollars one to one. So long as you have third party investment, that's two times that amount. So say it's like 10 million of government agency, it would have to be 20 million of private industry, and then zipper would give you 10 million. So now you have a $40 million contract. But it's not a $40 million contract.

Kristina Botelho [00:25:55]:
The work represents $40 million worth of contract, but what goes on contract is just the 20 million. So it's capturing that $40 million worth of work with just $20 million that people have a hard time wrapping their head around. But it's important that we get the benefits of that third party investment. That's the whole point of the program, to make those bigger bets and carry them over at the Valley of death.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:26:21]:
That, to me, also sounds like an incentive to commercialize. So it's not just the government dumping money and government research. There's an incentive there to go commercial. I'm just curious because I hear this conversation on the industry side sometimes. Do you think given the experience you have doing siber sitter, that's a good move? I would say, because I hear some vendors talk about how having dual use type of capability can be kind of a distraction, like from a business model perspective, especially in a startup phase, you should go after one or the other, not both. What are your thoughts on that?

Kristina Botelho [00:27:01]:
I think dual use is absolutely the way to go. And probably nine out of ten instances, one, the DoD is not here to build up your infrastructure, so we'll help you develop the technology, but we can't buy your warehouses and your production lines, so you'd need that third party investment. Two, the DoD is incredibly unreliable when it comes to money. We're under CR six months out of the year normally, so you can't count on us for income. So placing all your money and all your eggs in the basket, the DoD is not going to be a sound approach. And two benefits, the DoD, because if you're commercializing, that means you're offering this product to a wider range of people, which means you're not only improving upon your product for a wider range of customers, you're driving down the price. Economies of scale are going to start factoring in. I mean, that's why when you're working solely with large defense contractors, sometimes things get a lot more expensive because you're the sole provider to them.

Kristina Botelho [00:28:07]:
But if you have a big customer base, you're just leveraging the economies of scale so it benefits the Department of Defense.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:14]:
Yeah, I don't disagree. I just am curious if there's a case to be made that if we're doing government research, it should maybe stay that way until it reaches a certain point where it's, I don't know, more mature or something like that can be commercialized. I agree with you, though. You don't want to wait to get from any possible target audience, so I can understand both sides. And I guess it's easy for me to kind of be an outside observer in this and just watch how things play out. What else in Siber Sitterland do you want to make sure practitioners, and I mean, now you're speaking to the kos out there, contracting officers, anything we haven't covered that you, for sure, want to make sure that they know and understand so that they can maybe open up to a new tool in their toolbox, a new play in their playbook.

Kristina Botelho [00:29:05]:
Yeah. I mean, it should always be your first thought, and don't overthink it. If it looks too easy, it's not because someone's trying to trick you. Is that easy? Yeah. I remember when you explained trade wins to me. It took you three minutes, and I'm like, okay, cool. You're like, that's it. You believe me? Yeah.

Kristina Botelho [00:29:28]:
What's all there is then? Yes. Easy. So don't be afraid to take those risks. Go in and read the policy directive. It's actually not that long of a. Yeah, comparatively to other things that we have to read constantly.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:29:43]:
You mean the SBA policy directive?

Kristina Botelho [00:29:45]:
Yeah, most one came out May 3, 2023. It's not that hard of a read, and it outlines everything for you in pretty plain language, like, there's no beating around the bush of what's expected of you and what you need to do. It's a great tool to use.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:05]:
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And I love some of these approaches where there's only maybe a couple of pages worth of guidance or policy around what can happen, because that creates a lot more creative agency for someone like you and others out there in these seats.

Kristina Botelho [00:30:26]:
Yeah. I think leadership needs to encourage that creative agency, get contracting officers uncomfortable, ask tough questions, and see what they're really doing on their part to look into the best path forward instead of having it given to them.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:45]:
Do you have any recommended resources, like, outside of SBA policies, that you tend to read or listen to or watch?

Kristina Botelho [00:30:56]:
I'm a nerd. I go straight to the USC code.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:01]:
Okay, that's your version of read the manual?

Kristina Botelho [00:31:05]:
Yeah. I want to get to the brass tax of it, so. But no. The air force has created an acquisition innovation toolbox, which I'm finding kind of useful, and that at least provides links that work to other resources.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:24]:
I like how the bar is. It provides links that work. I know the bar.

Kristina Botelho [00:31:30]:
I feel like the bar can't go much higher than that. They have a spot where if a link is broken, you can report a broken link.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:39]:
Oh, okay.

Kristina Botelho [00:31:40]:
That's the step up that makes them better than all the rest.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:44]:
Is that only available to Air Force?

Kristina Botelho [00:31:46]:
I believe it is, but available to all of Air Force, not just Air force contracting. So that is also another good tool, because innovation is hitting everyone outside. It's not just the acquisition community that's dealing with this. Like Ford Spark cells. Those are airmen. Those are our maintainers, our operators, our pilots that are solving Air force problems. And then they solve it, and they're like, what do I do with my new toy? And they don't have contracting or acquisition variance to know how to scale it or how to bring it forward to do anything more. So I love helping those guys out and teaching them the ways.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:32:29]:
Yeah, I think army is going through that struggle right now. Like, how do they set up a system that reaches down into, at the soldier level, the unit level, and once they solve a problem, how do you scale know, leveraging? Like you said, contracting, acquisition, other resources.

Kristina Botelho [00:32:49]:
Yep. I also read that Space Force is trying something called, I think, delta division, where they put acquisition community with the end user.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:32:59]:
I love that. I think only nothing but good can come from that.

Kristina Botelho [00:33:03]:
Exactly. Yeah. When you're just throwing stuff over the fence to a contracting farm, you really can't get into it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:33:11]:
All right, last question. So I think you are for sure a defense maverick. You are out there. You understand at the statutory level what you can and cannot do, and you translate that back through all of the minutiae, the policy, the guidance, all the things were told or expected to do. And then honestly, you're asking why? And you're like, how do I do this faster? How do I make this better for customer? And I want to know from your perspective, even though I'm telling you my opinion, of course, yes, you're a defense maverick. But what does being a defense maverick mean to you? What does that look like to you?

Kristina Botelho [00:33:52]:
So I think I got where I am because I always asked why when I first started. I remember there was a lot of. Because this is the way we do it, and that's the way it's always been done. And that has never sat well with me. So the first few years, I wasn't well liked in the contracting community. My program managers always loved me, but contracting was not a fan of me. But I persist, and I learned more, and I got better. And I just continued to ask why? And dig into things and push the envelope and use my resources.

Kristina Botelho [00:34:33]:
I mean, I don't go crazy and just off the chain. I use my resources to make sure that I'm at the edge of doing what's right for the taxpayer, for the war fighter, for everyone. So you just take those risks? Yeah.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:34:50]:
Well, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for educating us a little bit on silver sitter, giving us a little insight into what it takes to be that forward leaning, innovative of practitioner. Any final thoughts, last words?

Kristina Botelho [00:35:04]:
Now just be awesome. Be awesome.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:35:07]:
Be awesome.

Kristina Botelho [00:35:08]:
Stop saying no. There's always a way to guess.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:35:12]:
Nice. All right. Thank you so much.

Kristina Botelho [00:35:14]:
Okay. Thank you.