Ajay Patel

Ajay Patel leads SMA, Inc., as President and CEO, and member of a newownership and management team since July 2013. He also leads advisoryteams focusing on competitive strategy, policy, technology and investment decisions for senior executives in industry and governments in the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia. Industry clients have included the executive leadership teams at major Tier I defense, intelligence community, and federal government contractors. Government clients have included the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), Assistant Secretary of Defense (NII), and Undersecretary of Air Force/DNRO amongst others. SMA is a consulting firm of over 650 professionals dedicated to improving its client’s competitiveness across their

entire program lifecycle from decisive pursuit and winning proposals to profitable execution.

Mr. Patel has over 30 years of consulting, business development, operations, program management and systems engineering experience. Prior to coming to SMA, Ajay was a Director at Deloitte consulting in the Aerospace and Defense practice. He was a Senior Partner at the Monitor Group for twelve years, and created and led its global National Security practice. During the 1990s, Ajay served in various roles at SMA (then SM&A) including Vice President of Business Development, Executive Vice President of SM&A’s Proposal Management group and as the firm’s Chief Operating Officer. Previously, Ajay was at TRW serving in technology development, systems engineering, program management and business development roles. Ajay is a seasoned veteran in providing competitive and technology strategy advice to companies working with the Department of Defense, intelligence community, and civilian federal agencies. Additionally, he has managed the competitive campaigns for major DoD systems and has served as a strategist for numerous multi-billion-dollar competitions.

Ajay lives in Newport Beach, California, with his wife Dr. Elizabeth Stillman. Elizabeth teaches business strategy, global management, and finance to graduate and undergraduate students at the University of La Verne. They have one daughter, Catherine, who is a graduate of the University of St. Andrews and Imperial College, London.

Ajay has an MBA, Strategic Planning & Finance, from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, and a BA, Physics, from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.