Katie Donnell and I attended the Unanet Champions Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, May 1-3, 2022. Unanet Champions started out with an amazing motivational speaker, Carey Lohrenz. Carey was the 1st Female F14 Pilot in the US Navy. Carey overcame many obstacles as the 1st Female F14 Pilot. Talk about inspiration! As someone who was used to flying at Mach 2, working in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment, she spoke about adapting quickly to avoid risks and shared steps in leadership that will help your team win every time.
That’s how so many businesses and employees feel, right? Life, in general, is super-fast paced, and it’s hard to keep up with requirements, policies, and the ever-changing market. Listening to Carey about being Resilient, Tenacious, and a Catalyst was a great way to kick off the Unanet Champions Conference. It reminded me why I love my job and working at Redstone. We can help our clients when they need us the most, and we can be that support and catalyst.
Unanet hosted a wonderful event filled with every opportunity to learn more about the software as well as business process improvements. A few of my favorite sessions were Resource Management with People Planner, Unanet Mobile App, and the Subcontracting Portal. If you are not using these functionalities in Unanet yet, it’s a must! It’s important to utilize the new functionalities and continue to improve your processes with the Unanet product enhancements.
Unanet hosted fabulous dinners every night, which allowed us plenty of opportunities to network with new and old friends. We really enjoyed meeting new people and making connections from DC all the way to San Diego. The Unanet Neon Desert Party was a personal favorite. As we arrived, we received neon sunglasses, and everyone ended the night dancing and playing fun yard games. Thanks to this great networking opportunity, Redstone is currently collaborating with other companies to bring new content and services to our clients. We are excited to take what we learned at Unanet Champions and teach our Redstone clients how to better utilize the system to its capabilities, which will allow our clients to be more productive.
To close, Unanet brought in the original founder of the company, Fran Craig, to give the keynote speech on the last day. Fran also attended sessions within the conference where Katie found herself sitting next to Fran in a session. It means a lot to look back on the long-standing partnership that Redstone Government Consultants has had with Unanet and see how far we have come.
LaDonna is an Managing Consultant with Redstone Government Consulting, Inc. based in our firms Huntsville office. Her area of expertise includes supporting clients with implementation and daily operations using Unanet, as well as supporting Contracts, Proposal Pricing and Accounting Compliance. Professional Experience LaDonna has over 15-years’ experience in progressive accounting, finance, contracts and human resources related roles at both large and small business government contractors. Her diverse background on most facets of the government contractor back office brings a unique perspective to her support of Redstone GCI client software implementations. LaDonna began her career in Government Contracting as an accountant with a large government contractor. After several years of progressive experience, she was able to migrate to additional roles within the Company’s contracts organization, including as a Contracts Administrator where she supported both FAR Part 15 and FAR Part 12 Contracts. This experience led to LaDonna accepting a role with a small, but growing government contracts firm where she support accounting, contracts and HR functions during the Company’s growth and eventual acquisition. In this role, LaDonna was first exposed to Unanet and participated in the Company’s successful implementation and adoption process. LaDonna has utilized Unanet in the performance of her day-to-day role including, pricing, proposals, contracts administration, project control, DCAA audits and more. Her user experience coupled with her pursuit of the Unanet Certified Implementer designation will allow her to bring a truly unique perspective to our Unanet implementation and post implementation support engagements. LaDonna’s wide range of experience at small and large contractors and across the back office allows her to see the “bigger picture” and provide best practice advice to our clients across many subject matter areas. Education LaDonna has her B.S Degree from The University of Alabama in Huntsville and M.S in Contract Acquisition from Florida Institute of Technology where she graduated Magna Cum Laude.