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.
Katie is the Unanet Practice Lead at Redstone Government Consulting, Inc. based in our Huntsville, Alabama office. Her areas of expertise include supporting government contract businesses with a special focus in DCAA-compliant Unanet Time and Expense Tracking, Project Portfolio and Financials. QuickBooks, and Deltek GCS. Katie is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Certified Unanet Systems Implementer and has completed the Unanet Advanced Project Management training. Katie was one of the first Unanet Certified Implementers and was part of the initial pilot offering to non-Unanet consultants. As part of her certification process, Katie invested over 300-hours of instruction, out of class database development time and testing to obtain her certification. Since certification, Katie has assisted numerous Redstone GCI clients with implementation and post-implementation support services. Katie is frequently called upon by Unanet to join their implementation teams as an external resource and is considered a subject matter expert in the implementation of all Unanet software offerings. In her role with Redstone Government Consulting, Inc., Katie not only provides software systems expertise, but also frequently assists clients with preparation and support of DCAA audit activities including SF1408 pre-award accounting system audits, provisional billing rate submission, development of forward pricing rates for proposals, incurred cost submission preparation and development and design of policies and procedures necessary to support an adequate (DCAA-approved) accounting system. Katie serves as the primary point of contact for many small business clients in government cost accounting/compliance and assists monthly with the close of those contractor’s accounting systems and reporting to program management and executives. Her industry experience, software systems expertise and compliance knowledge provides a rare combination of knowledge to clients looking for a consultant to become an integral part of their team. Professional Experience Prior to joining Redstone Government Consulting, Inc., Katie worked in public accounting as well as small to mid-sized government contractors. She has prior operational experience with the many types of software such as Unanet, Deltek GCS, QuickBooks, SpringAhead, Deltek T&E, ADP, Paychex, and QB Payroll. Education Katie earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from The University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2010, where she was President of Beta Alpha Psi (an honor organization for finance and accounting students and professionals). She received her Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The University of North Alabama in 2014, graduating Cum Laude. Decades of Consulting, Training and Helping Government Contractors Succeed Redstone GCI offers a variety of services for large and small government contractors including evaluation, education and training, monitoring and DCAA audit preparation. Through our consulting and training programs, government contractors develop and learn to maintain compliance processes that help them succeed by mitigating risk and maximizing profitability. Our consulting team is comprised of senior leaders from government agencies and industry executives creating balance and an informed approach to our client services. Our services span the entire government contract lifecycle from proposal assistance, accounting, audit readiness, purchasing, project controls, contract administration, system implementation through to contract closeout. We specialize in preparing contractors for growth through our deep knowledge of common pitfalls companies face as they progress from small business in CAS, DFARS Business Systems and other common gates to contractor growth. In addition to almost 30 full-time consultants we also maintain a trusted network of independent contractors and other service providers who work with our team on specialized areas like ITAR, facility security, EVMS and other areas.