Elizabeth Anne Wilhelm

Finding ways to help agencies better execute their missions is a central goal for any good contractor. Identifying the need even before the agency does, however, requires a different level of dedication entirely.

That’s exactly what Elizabeth Anne Wilhelm and her LeapPoint colleagues did for the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID conducts most of its work through local nongovernmental organizations, and in Africa, finding and screening those partners was a labor-intensive process conducted almost entirely via Microsoft Word documents.

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LeapPoint had developed a tool for automating surveys and assessments, and Wilhelm spearheaded an unsolicited proposal to tailor that technology to USAID’s needs. After an initial pilot, the project expanded to 11 additional missions in southern Africa, and this month a new version was deployed that accommodates additional languages and improved querying.

The staff time for each assessment dropped by 25 percent, Wilhelm said, and USAID is now connecting with a much broader pool of potential partners.

The USAID work is just part of her portfolio, however. LeapPoint is a small firm, so she also functions as chief financial officer and — though still early in her career — mentors many of the firm’s three dozen employees. And because any sort of survey framework can be incorporated into the tool built for USAID, a key goal for 2017 is bringing that automation to other agencies.