Name: John Hillen
Title: Executive in Residence and Professor of Practice, School of Business
Agency/Company: George Mason University
The GovCon professor. Hillen, a former agency official and industry CEO, has long been a forceful advocate for contractors and for treating the federal contracting industry as an economic sector that is akin to energy, health care or the auto industry. Those efforts took a new form in 2016 with the creation of the Mason GovCon Initiative, which Hillen runs from GMU’s School of Business. He also raised funds for government contracting fellowships at the business school, which has now added GovCon-specific courses to its MBA program.