Patience Samson, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Axient named Board Vice President of Growth & Development for WiCyS North AL Affiliate

Join us in welcoming Patience Samson , the new Vice President of Growth and Development for Women in CyberSecurity - WiCyS North Al Affiliate! With 20 years of experience in operations, business development and marketing, Patience brings a wealth of expertise and leadership to our organization. She is the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Axient , where she is responsible for growth, public relations/affairs, and corporate development/affairs activities across all business segments and customers. We're honored to have her on our team and look forward to her contributions in empowering women in the cybersecurity field.

#WiCyS #WiCySNorthAl #WomenInCybersecurity #NorthAlabama #BusinessDevelopment #Cybersecurity #STEM #Leadership

Want to know more about Patience?

Read her BIO here:

Patience Samson is the Vice President of Corporate Development at Axient, headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. Ms. Samson is responsible for growth and business development (BD) activities and personnel at Axient, from market analysis, M&A, marketing, and opportunity identification to capture and proposal development across all business segments and customers. Ms. Samson partners with the CEO and C-suite to develop and execute corporate strategy to meet organic and inorganic growth targets. Additionally, Ms. Samson leads all internal and external strategic communications, public relations, marketing, and branding for the company.

Patience was born and raised in Montana and graduated from Pepperdine University in 2004. Post-graduation, she started as a national security analyst at Science Applications International Corporate (SAIC). She supported a combat support Department of Defense (DoD) agency for seven years, moving from analyst to senior program manager. She gained expertise in policy, strategic and operational planning, and training and exercises across WMD nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and consequence management for DoD and other Federal, state and local agencies. The highlight of these years was participating in several Cabinet-level exercises at the White House during the Bush Administration.??

In May 2011, Patience graduated with her Executive MBA from the University of Maryland (through SAIC’s executive nomination program), which she completed while working fulltime and having her first child. Upon graduation, she was offered a position in BD for the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Group at SAIC. During the Leidos-SAIC split in 2013, Patience was promoted to Director at Leidos and eventually became the head of all BD operations for one of Leidos’ two Sectors (the National Security Sector). In 2015, she was promoted to the corporate staff as Director, Corporate Business Development, where she managed the design, implementation, training, and company-wide rollout of the customer relationship management platform, Salesforce, at Leidos. At this time, she also worked as a member of the senior management team who planned and executed the transaction combining Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems and Global Services (IS&GS) business with Leidos to create the largest IT provider in the federal market space, forming a then $10B company.??

The ISGS-Leidos merger facilitated Patience working more cross-functional efficiencies and operational excellence initiatives for the company, and she became a member of the newly-formed Corporate Administrative Office, overseeing all IT, Communications, Facilities, Strategic Sourcing, Security, Enterprise Business Operations (Shared Services), and Integration Management of the new Leidos. In this role, she managed cross-functional initiatives, realized and reported cost-saving synergies across the company, and managed projects to ensure the successful integration of systems, cultures, people, and operations for the combined company.?

Patience left Leidos to accept an opportunity to lead business development at Noblis. At Noblis, she initiated a disciplined approach to BD and supported growth across all business units, increased submits and win rates year over year (achieving company records), and worked collaboratively across the executive team to develop the first five-year strategy in company history. Ms. Samson was the executive leader of Noblis’ BD, marketing, and communications functions to include M&A target identification and due diligence; market research and competitive intelligence; decision gates; customer relationship and pipeline processes; capture and proposal execution; BD analysis; marketing; and all external and internal communications for the company. Ms. Samson analyzed Noblis’ capacity and capability to drive business into new market areas and drove company efforts towards those growth markets. She led Noblis’ expansion into the Huntsville market, delivering new Army cyber business to Noblis and opened its first office in Huntsville to drive growth for the intel, civil, and defense lines of business.

Patience loved Huntsville from the get go, but the pandemic brought about the opportunity to leave the DC Metro area after 16 years for a new adventure in Huntsville with Axient. Patience and her family are extremely happy with the move to Huntsville and the community they have found there. It is a great place to raise a family, work in government contracting, and still manage a wonderful work-life balance surrounded by smart and friendly people. Patience enjoys chasing her two children (12 & 9) around soccer and football fields, basketball courts, and choir concerts. The Samson family enjoys traveling and exploring as much as is feasible with work, school, and sports, and loves listening to music, cooking, appreciating good food, and making good memories together.