The Buzz with ACT-IAC
The Buzz with ACT-IAC
Innovating Federal Tech at Karsun Solutions
In this episode of The Buzz, we sit down with Amanda Mahoney, Head of Marketing and Communications at Karsun Solutions, to discuss federal technology modernization with a specific focus on AI. Amanda delves into Karsun's platform Redux, highlighting how AI is used to modernize legacy systems efficiently. She also shares insights about the company's innovative processes, their collaborative culture, and the evolving landscape of AI applications in government. This conversation provides a glimpse into the future of federal tech and the importance of collaboration and curiosity in driving innovation.
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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound
(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)
Yohanna: [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome back. On this episode of The Buzz, we get to talk with Amanda Mahoney, the head of Marketing and Communications at Karsun Solutions. They discuss insights on federal technology modernization, particularly focusing on AI and its impact. Amanda shares a lot of great details about Carson's innovative platform redux.
Yohanna: Enjoy.
Yohanna: Hi Amanda. Thank you so much for joining me. So I, I met you at our, our, the last demo day that we did a couple of weeks ago. And when I approached you and I pitched, you know, Hey, would you be interested in coming onto the podcast? I, I noticed that you were really excited. You were like, yes, absolutely.
Yohanna: So to me that means. That there's a lot of fun stuff happening over at Carson. Looking back on, on maybe demo day, did anything stand out to you or to maybe to your team?
Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it won't come as a surprise to many folks that right now there's this big [00:01:00] emphasis on improving efficiency, and I think there's really kind of two key ways.
Amanda: Um, that a lot of partners are out there doing this. So one is they're reducing complexity for their customers, right? So they're asking, how can we use our AI tools to give us deeper insights to do our work better? So that's one whole bucket. The other is, how can we connect to the AI tools we need, right?
Amanda: We know that they're out there. How can we get to them? And more importantly. How can we find knowledgeable partners? And I think the demo day was a great day for folks to kind of walk around and answer some of those questions. Um, the other thing that I think is really interesting is folks are really in interested in trying to figure out how they can deliver value.
Amanda: With ai, right? So the adoption of any new technology, but AI especially comes with risks, right? So we wanna know how we can balance those risks versus getting the value back. And again, part of that comes back to finding those knowledgeable partners at events like Demo Day and also trying to look for proven performance.
Amanda: Seeing where they're actually actively using [00:02:00] those tools, and then really understanding how they can quickly get in and assess ROI on those investments.
Yohanna: Okay. All right. Cool. Yeah, I always. I like walking around demo day. I like like talking to folks and asking, what are you guys here for? And then I always, there's always something new like, I, I had no idea that, you know, these folks were working on this and I didn't know that that was even a problem.
Yohanna: So that's really good to know. From, from your vantage point, what are some of the problems, spaces that, that Karsun is just urgently focused on right now? I also wanna know. Like how is your team kind of uniquely positioned to, I guess, move the needle in those areas?
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, and I mean, I think. Finding a key challenge and really digging into it and figuring out how you can build your tool set around.
Amanda: Solving that challenge is one of the ways that you can ensure that you can bring all of your knowledge to the forefront and bring all of your experience to really make sure that you're delivering value. Um, so for us. Uh, many folks who know Carsten probably know that we're laser focused on modernization to meet our customer's [00:03:00] mission.
Amanda: Uh, and of course, AI is the challenge, is the tool that we're bringing to meet that challenge. And we've had, we have a very particular challenge we're working on solving, which is mainframe and legacy systems that. Very complex, but are also older, so they might lack documentation or they might have experts and components that are retiring.
Amanda: And so what our platform does, and we call our platform Redux, R-E-D-U-X, it stands for re-imagining digital user experience. What we do is we use Redux to help ourselves understand those systems faster, right? So what the platform does is it first provides human accessible insights at both the structural and behavioral level to help us understand that system light better.
Amanda: And then we've built our tool as a comprehensive end-to-end tool so we can take all of those insights and then use AI agents to do all of the common modernization activities that a team might do, right? So it's things like our code generation. There's things like our pipeline automation and even quality testing.
Amanda: So [00:04:00] what we're doing is we're really accelerating the part at the beginning, getting really good insights, using those as guardrails, and then using AI to accelerate the rest of the process.
Yohanna: Oh yeah, that's really smart. I love that. Getting all the data and then figuring out what to do with the data.
Yohanna: Exactly right. So before we jump in, I don't think I did a proper introduction. Who, who are we even talking to? I'd love to hear a little bit more about your personal path. Um, I guess what pulled you into this, you know, federal tech modernization space and what, I guess what moments, or maybe if you have mentors that shaped you in your early trajectory.
Yohanna: Um, yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. So my name is Amanda Mahoney, and I lead marketing and communications here at Karsun Solutions. And I have sort of a unique introduction into this federal technology workspace. When I started at Karsun almost a decade ago, I started in the Karsun Innovation Center. We have an in-house research and development team here.
Amanda: Um, that was founded almost when the company was founded to just really make sure that we're providing the latest and greatest technology. And I'm [00:05:00] really fortunate because I kind of grew up in my federal technology career inside this innovation center. So I've always been where there's sort of this hotbed of ideas and thinking about how we bring new capabilities and how we talk about it for our customers.
Yohanna: So right now you're, you're leading marketing and communications. It feels, it sounds also like pretty highly technical, but I also, I also feel like there's other things that are happening. Like, there's a lot of tech stuff, but then when it comes to co communication and storytelling, you have to kind of like understand a lot of different moving pieces and stuff.
Yohanna: So I, I wanna know what initially inspired you to take on that. Responsibility and how has, I think the perspective on federal modernization and emerging tech evolved with your time at Carson's. I mean, you've been there for the bulk of, of your career. I'm really
Amanda: fortunate in that Carson. Really heavily invest in the technical training of [00:06:00] all of its team members.
Amanda: That includes myself as a marketing professional. I actually have taken training alongside our technical train teams. Um, and actually I've been able to sit for my AWS and safe certifications. And the thing that's really cool and has really shaped how I tell stories as, uh, as a marketer, as a person, um.
Amanda: Speaking both to our teams internally and externally is because I take those technical trainings with our folks who are actually lose using the technology. I really feel like I, not only can I understand it at a more technical level, I can understand why different pieces really get our teams excited about how they can serve our customers.
Amanda: And that's a really unique opportunity. Um, so that's, that's a big piece of why I came up the way I did as far as how. Technology has evolved and some of the stories that we've told around it. Our innovation center has another kind of unique aspect of its professional development and training program, which is what we call our innovation town hall.
Amanda: They happen [00:07:00] every month, and part of that includes team members actually suggesting. Technologies and approaches that our r and d team can prototype. And at every one of those innovation town halls, they speak to where they are in that prototyping process. And it really gives everybody at Karsun a snapshot into like at the ground level how technology is evolving.
Amanda: And the thing that's, I think, really neat about it is it really centers that conversation around technology and innovation on how it's driving capability. For our customers because it's this feedback, Luke, where the teams are suggesting it for, here's a challenge that I'm seeing. Can we use this? They're coming back and it's this back and forth collaborative approach, and I think both have really helped me evolve in terms of.
Amanda: How we think about technology, how we think about its impact out in the real world, and how we tell stories around it.
Yohanna: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love when a company has a place where its employees can be vulnerable and open and like, you know, just ex, you know, share an [00:08:00] idea. Maybe it won't work. Maybe it's.
Yohanna: Ahead of its time, and it won't work at this time, but, you know, later on I love that because I think emerging tech in government requires balancing excitement around innovation, um, with like practical realities, you know, like the practical mi like this is the mission. Like how can we just do this in a, in a, in a way.
Yohanna: And, and so that sounds really fun. Um, how do you, so then how do you approach communicating the balance in your work with like. The excitement because like we started this podcast and like, I didn't even really introduce you, I was just excited. 'cause like I, I met you at Govtech and we were like, we were like, you know, going back and forth.
Yohanna: So how do you, how do you do the balance, the balancing act? Yeah.
Amanda: I think it really comes back to. Really thinking about what technology can do. Again, like I said, for our customers, for their mission, um, for me, that's the part that I'm actually really passionate about. It's, it's neat to see really innovative technology in action, but it's even more exciting to see the impact, right?
Amanda: And I think of it again in terms of like the [00:09:00] storytelling approach that you have this a hundred thousand foot view that you have to tell a tech about the technology, right? And you have to tell. A little bit of the story about here's the immediate impact, where we're gonna get our gains in efficiency, how things are going to improve.
Amanda: Um, but for a, a company that's focused on modernization and really focused on what technology can do for our customers, we also have to tell that story about, Hey, we're building your system to be future ready, and this is what it means to you. These, this is the art of the possible. And actually here at Carson.
Amanda: Several years ago, we made the decision to kind of wrap that around the marketing theme of modernization for every next, this idea that we're modernizing now, but we're also preparing you for all of those future opportunities. And I think that's so critical in terms of giving us a reason to be so passionate about the innovation that we're bringing to our customers.
Yohanna: Oh yeah, absolutely. I agree. I agree. So you guys are always looking for the future, always looking towards towards that horizon. What's next? What's [00:10:00] next? So let's look back, how about you share a little bit about your early days, your early career, what challenge or what pivot deeply influenced the way you lead, how you lead, how you collaborate, and your storytelling style.
Amanda: Yeah, so it's interesting. Like I said, I started initially in our Karsun Innovation Center, and when I started. Uh, all the way back then, one of our key offerings that we had is a, um, our software development methodology called Go Lean. And Go Lean is sort of tricky because not only is it our development methodology, which is really key to how we do everything, it's actually also a platform that our teams can use and essentially compare the output of Run Pro, of doing the process one way, and then change their process slightly and compare whether or not they've improved their actual process.
Amanda: From one, from one iteration to the next, and Oh, okay. As somebody who's coming into technology for the first time, it was actually a very exciting opportunity for me because [00:11:00] one. You're learning all about the process all at once, why all of the pieces are critical, why we're doing process improvement the way we are.
Amanda: But at the same time, you have this challenge of explaining both what a tool does and why we, we picked certain processes and from the very beginning that put, uh, a lot of emphasis again on showing impact. Right away showing impact, understanding it, understanding how we can tell that story outside of our organization as we see those little wins that then become big wins.
Amanda: Um, so I think sort of cutting my teeth early with gole, cutting my teeth early with, um, a story that was around process improvement. Although very challenging at first because it had lots of components to, it actually resulted in, uh, better marketing, better storytelling, a better approach to collaboration for me.
Amanda: Did
Yohanna: you have a, a theme song for GoLine and did it sound like GoLine GoLine GoLine? I wish, was it a dolly part? I wish I could
Amanda: rewind the clock, you know, several [00:12:00] years ago. We should have done that.
Yohanna: As soon as you said that, I was like, Dolly Parton. I hope you're doing well. Yeah. Okay. Cool. All right. Um, Gole, um, so real quick, what are some trends across ai, across, uh, data experience cloud or CX that you think.
Yohanna: Are gonna reshape the federal modernization and I guess in the, the most, in the next three to five years. What's something that you see, because, I mean, you've been there, you're always looking for the future. You, you might, you might see something.
Amanda: Yeah, I think I. So we're really up close and personal with AI right now, and I think as we talk about ai, there's gonna be a bit of a mindset shift.
Amanda: Where we go from thinking of AI is just a collection of tools that we might type into a browser, find the right AI tool, do a quick prompt, and hopefully get the answer that we're looking for towards. AI that becomes more like an [00:13:00] expert or a colleague for us. So in other words, it's something that we have in house.
Amanda: We've trained it, like we might train a peer that's coming on to work for our team for the first time. And it gives us expert insight that applies to our specific challenge. Um, and I'm gonna use a marketing example for this as opposed to a technology example, but you know, right now in the marketing space, there's a lot of talk about.
Amanda: Is, is chat GPT or another tool gonna replace the content marketer? Right? If you can just type into a chat, write me a blog about emerging technology, you can do that. The problem is that blog that's going to come back, if you're just using the, the tool that you get to through your browser, it's going to give you a very broad.
Amanda: Response, and it may not be all that well aligned to what you're doing with marketing. It might not be a capability that you have or it might not be clear how you differentiate yourself thinking about that technology. Um, so we need to think about it not just as like this tool that we go out and have, write a blog post for us [00:14:00] instead, um, thinking about things on that CX level.
Amanda: Uh, I have another colleague that uses an example that I love, which is. If we have a lot of user interviews, I mean something that is hours and hours, potentially days worth of user interview footage, something that an AI tool could be very useful for is to go through all of those interviews and tell us consistent themes that come up right, and then this gives our product team insights into how the users are actually using.
Amanda: The, the piece of software, the application that we've developed, but it also gives me a marketer, the heart of why people pick and make the decisions that they make when they use their tool. So what I've essentially done is I've created an expert in our users because it's a tool that I've trained on my user interviews.
Amanda: Um, and so really starting to think about our ai. Agents, whether they're, they're an agent and they're using a, a series of tools together to create an end result, or they're just using it as a research tool. The, the [00:15:00] way we wanna think about it is our AI counterparts are really experts in a certain area that we can leverage to do our jobs better.
Amanda: Just like we would collaborate with our team members and I think once we kinda shift that mindset from tool to expert, things will really take off.
Yohanna: Oh yeah. Making it really specific. Feeding it your large language model essentially. Like all of the, those interviews and stuff. Oh
Amanda: yeah.
Yohanna: Wow. Okay. That's interesting.
Yohanna: I like that. And it also just makes things efficient. For you on that end, instead of like going through like hours and hours of these interviews, there's an AI model out there or agent that's like, yeah,
Amanda: and I think the thing that's kind of critical there too is when we go through hours and hours, there's.
Amanda: One way that as a person, I would go through and tag and identify some of those themes. There's another way that as we train our AI tool or AI agent, they may go through and depending on how we do that, and as we refine our, our, our agents, we might get deeper insights than we would've received [00:16:00] just on our own if we were just doing it by ourselves, listening to hours and hours.
Amanda: Oh yeah, for sure. I see that.
Yohanna: Do you, do you wanna share maybe a, a, a different. Karsun project that you've, or do you wanna maybe expand on this?
Amanda: Yeah, I can, um, talk a little bit more about this at a, at a technical level. So, for instance, I mentioned earlier that our Redux platform has two parts, right? We speed up the discovery piece and we just speed up the delivery piece of the process.
Amanda: And actually, in both cases, we're using agents by making them experts. Oh, okay.
Yohanna: So,
Amanda: on one hand, in the discovery process, we're making the agent an expert. In your enterprise system by helping them better understand the relationship between all of the components. That's how they can turn around then and give you visualizations that you can work through to better understand your system and eventually move towards modernizing it on the other end.
Amanda: It's not just about. Expertise in the know, in, in knowledge that that is a critical component because as we go through, we start doing the delivery pieces of the process. We're not gonna lose that information. We're gonna give that [00:17:00] off to the next round of agents just like we were if we were a human team, right?
Amanda: We're not just gonna keep our SMS um, informed. We're gonna also ensure the rest of the development team is informed. So our development agents, they have access to all of that wonderful information that we did during the discovery process. But on top of that. Uh, we might give those agents the ability to interact with some of our tools.
Amanda: So that might be, if you design in Figma, now the agent has access to Figma, so they can go in and look at the designs. So as they're doing the code generation, they're doing it to the specifications of the human team. Oh, wow. So you've now created somebody who's not only an expert in the system. Just like when we work as a team, we're an expert in the systems that we work on, um, but is also an expert because they know how to use specific tools.
Amanda: And when we talk about agent ai, that's what we mean. I
Yohanna: kind of feel like folks outside of this ecosystem. They often kind of, they, they don't understand how nuanced federal tech like really is. Like, that's really detailed. That's What do you feel is a misconception when it comes [00:18:00] to like government contracting or emerging tech, like the adoption of, of this emerging tech that you wish more people would let go of because.
Yohanna: That that whole, like that whole funnel that you described is something that like I would've never understood had I not been here,
Amanda: you know? Yeah. I think you really queued it up beautifully. Um, people really underestimate the complexity. Of work that goes in on in public sector agencies, right? So most people interact with very large businesses every day, and they understand that for every business that they interact with, there are all these pieces that move behind scenes, right?
Amanda: And accounting and legal and HR and marketing and sales. But folks who don't interact with the government every day. Don't always have a sense that there's all that complexity that's behind the scenes for all of the activities that government does. And so all that complexity, right? That means there's lots of individual components that are behind the scenes and lots of [00:19:00] individual systems that all have to figure out ways to work with each other.
Amanda: And the tricky part is those systems are of different ages. They've been modernized or updated at different points in time. Um, they've had to meet different re regulatory requirements over their lifespan, and so it, it really creates a very tangled mess. And I think when people look at government technology and say.
Amanda: I don't understand why this isn't intuitive in the way that I'm, I think it is relative to how I think government or business should work. They're not seeing all of that complexity behind the scenes. I think the real challenge is, is pulling back the curtain in a way that makes sense to folks who aren't interacting those systems at right day.
Amanda: Oh yeah, for sure.
Yohanna: It's, it's daunting. It's daunting. It's
Amanda: daunting. Yeah. It's, I mean, I think it's daunting in, in the, in the world before ai. Where you were doing, doing these projects manually, it took years to complete, and there's a reason why it takes years to complete is because of the complexity and it's because.
Amanda: You want to lower risk [00:20:00] before you make major changes and you wanna do it right. And without a full grasp of the complexity, it's hard to reduce risk.
Yohanna: Absolutely. My mom always says, measure twice, cut once. I love that. It, it, it for, it serves me for almost everything in life measure. And if you have to, if it's gonna take you a really long time to measure twice, that's great.
Yohanna: 'cause when you're ready to cut, you're only, you only have to do it once. You know, like,
Amanda: yeah, and the thing is, as we talk about ai, the truth of the matter is, is you still have. A measure twice mindset, right? So you're not just trusting what AI puts out for you. There should be a human AI interaction where, or sometimes it's called human in the loop, where you have the opportunity for your human team to go through and verify and understand in your, in your tools and your platforms that use ai.
Amanda: I think that's a mandatory requirement. There has to be that interaction to ensure accuracy. The, the thing is. AI just gives you those initial insights so much more quickly so that you [00:21:00] can start that back and forth process sooner. Yeah, for sure. And get more out of it
Yohanna: in this evolution, in this loop. As the human in this loop, where do you see, where do you see Carson?
Yohanna: I guess it, yeah. Where do you see Karsun in the next five years, you know, with, with its innovation efforts? Is there any, are there any secrets that you can share with us?
Amanda: Well, I certainly think Redux, which is our AI plat AI powered modernization platform, is just going to continue and to grow and evolve because the capabilities.
Amanda: For what AI can do to enhance modernization are so far beyond simple code generation that there's numerous opportunities to continue building out capabilities there. But over and beyond that, I think the thing that's really powerful at Karsun is we've got this really robust innovation engine, right?
Amanda: That gives us the ability. To pull in new ideas, to validate those prototypes and approaches, to eventually turn them into toolkits and resources for our team. And then eventually we build them out into these platforms that we offer [00:22:00] enterprise modernization teams. So whether it's AI or whatever comes after ai, I think that's really ex The thing that's really exciting about Karsun is we know that we're always gonna have this engine that really builds up the resources to ensure that we're doing modernization better and we're giving.
Amanda: Our customers the best possible capabilities that are out there in the market. Wow. There's something after ai, the quantum stuff. You think like quantum or even, I mean, the truth of the matter is, again, AI is part of the approach, but it's not the end. Right? So there's
Yohanna: Yeah.
Amanda: Ample opportunity to imagine.
Amanda: The next challenge that needs to be solved. And then from there, we build our resources. We prototype. Once everything's validated, we build it out to a toolkit. We build it out to a platform. And then the next piece comes,
Yohanna: I, I'm listening to you. And I think that there's a lot of creativity, like there's a lot of creativity that goes into all of this, just thinking about it and then how to put it into motion strategy, et cetera.
Yohanna: I, I'd like to know what you [00:23:00] think are some skills or traits or I guess maybe a mindset. You believe the next generation of federal tech leaders absolutely need to succeed? I
Amanda: think the classic technology answer of curiosity is as true today as it was when PE people were saying it several decades ago.
Amanda: The truth of the matter is, whether it's AI or cloud or something else, you have to constantly be thinking. What's out there? How can I use it? What challenge needs solved today? How can I do this better? And somebody who's always out and always trying to learn and pull the, that input and that information in, I think is really key to being able to lead the, the charge with technology.
Amanda: Um, and then, and really thinking about how it can be applied to current challenges.
Yohanna: That's really great advice. I accept it. I accept that advice. I like always being curious. I don't always know everything, you know, like. And even if I went to college for this, but I don't know, [00:24:00] you know, like things, because things are moving so fast all the time.
Yohanna: I read somewhere that like, AI changes every seven months, so like at least twice a year we're, we have a whole new model, a whole new way of trying to interact with. With this new tool. So I accept that advice. Are, is there any other advice that you'd, that you'd give folks that are listening on, they're on the outside and help folks understand where they can start?
Amanda: Yeah, I think the other key thing is, and this just comes from my experience, sort of originating in our innovation center and seeing how we do it, is really thinking about. How you collaborate, right? That collaborative approach. How do you take in feedback from the outside, whether that's again, that curiosity that's constantly out there saying what's next?
Amanda: What's next? What's next to, um, really tuning into how you listen to pain points, right? And think about how the users of your application may engage with it in the future, um, to thinking about how, as you're working with. Other team members, other other folks in [00:25:00] the same industry and same space. How you're bringing them in and collaborating and building better together.
Amanda: I think having that real collaborative mindset is. Really key to innovation because it's not a one person endeavor. It's something that's better the more people are working together and the the stronger you build your feedback cycles. Oh yeah.
Yohanna: That's what ACT IAC is all about. We're all about collaborating.
Yohanna: All of our events are about collaborating. We try to introduce people to each other, whether you're, you're on the industry side, the government side. All right, so we're wrapping up. Um, I, I, I kind of already know the answer to this, but what is really what excites you, whether it's the technical shift or the new capabilities or redux or, you know, the things that you're building.
Yohanna: Is it maybe a cultural change, but I, I kind of, I kind of already know. What are some things that are, that are exciting? That are exciting for you? Yeah.
Amanda: I think for me, uh, AI is of course very exciting, but really. [00:26:00] Most exciting to me is that we have all of these new insights, all of these new ways of understanding the world, and that allows us to get to things that we can do better, quicker.
Amanda: And it also allows us to do, to figure out what's wowing customers currently where we can elevate and optimize. And so I think all of those insights as part of how we drive innovation right now, powered by ai, I think that's what excites me the most. Oh yeah, for sure.
Yohanna: Okay, great. Thank you so much for your time.
Yohanna: For people who wanna follow your work or stay connected to, you know, to this conversation at Carson, where should they look? Yeah, so
Amanda: I've spoken a lot about our Redux platform. If folks see me out in public, that's usually what I'm talking about. If you're interested in Redux, you can go to our Redux website, which is Go Redux, REDU x.ai.
Amanda: And again, Redux is just our latest platform from Carson. So to follow all of the exciting news from Carson, including what's happening with our innovation center, they can always visit [00:27:00] us@carsonllc.com. That's K-A-R-S-U-N llc.com.
Yohanna: Great. Thank you so much, Amanda. This was really fun. Thank
Yohanna: you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Buzz.
Yohanna: Stay tuned for more conversations and insights in future episodes. Until next time, stay curious and connected.