Luke Sturges is the founder and managing partner at Artemis ARC. Prior to starting Artemis, he served as an Explosive Detection Canine Handler and Security Professional. He has more than 10 years of experience training and caring for assigned working dogs; searching facilities, mail, cargo and people for the presence of explosives; and conducting antiterrorism operations. In this role, he performed explosive detection searches alongside Secret Service for U.S. Presidents, Vice Presidents and Secretaries of State. It was these experiences and the desire to continue making a public impact that led him to establish a Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business.
Inspired by his military experience, Luke founded Artemis with the goal of advancing the health, wellness and achievement of our nation’s Veterans. To successfully accomplish this objective, Artemis leverages innovative marketing techniques, technology and data science to educate Veterans and service members and drive awareness about available benefits and resources. Luke’s experience enables him to provide tailored guidance based on clients’ unique goals and objectives.
With 15 years of experience in all facets of communications, project management and strategic planning, Alyson leads the daily operations of Artemis. She is a proven problem solver and leader who applies data analysis and human-centered design approaches to engineer processes and create more functional organizations and more cohesive teams. She leads project teams and collaborates with partners to implement innovative strategies for federal clients, including the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), among others. Alyson is passionate about her client’s missions and viewed as a trusted advisor. Under her leadership, clients have won more than 50 industry awards including Hermes Platinum and Gold Awards; Bronze Anvil Awards; the G2Xchange Disruptive Tech Program Award; and Gold Communicator Awards.
Alyson’s experience includes standing up program management offices, overseeing large-scale recruitment marketing and benefits campaigns, aiding change management transformations, documenting effectiveness and developing innovative print and electronic materials.
Rachele Cooper founded Aptive with a goal of leveraging technology and communications to improve organizational performance and support our nation’s Veterans.
With this mission in mind and using skills acquired over an eclectic career—serving in the military, working as an engineer at the Naval Research Lab and leading national marketing and communications campaigns—Rachele and her team offer Aptive’s clients fresh perspectives, unique insights and committed partnership.
She’s led complex, high-profile engagements spanning health promotion and disease prevention, strategic communications, technology transformations and organizational change management. Since forming Aptive her work has impacted health care modernization, the opioid epidemic, Veteran homelessness, suicide prevention, access to care, health technology and national defense. Rachele is a member of the Elev8 Advisory Council.
- U.S. Navy Veteran
- 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year, Mid-Atlantic Region, Ernst & Young
- 2024 CEO of the Year, Washington Exec
- 2022 FedHealthIT 100 Awardee
- 2020 Leading for Impact, Women in Leadership honoree
- 2020 Dream Big Veteran-Owned Business Achievement Award – U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Prosci Change Management Practitioner
- M.A., New York University
- B.S., Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan
As Chief Operating Officer, Mary is responsible for daily corporate operations, ensuring efficient and effective business processes for optimal client delivery. She collaborates with other executive leaders to develop and execute the organization’s strategies to reach business goals and objectives. Mary plans, operates, scales and matures Artemis’ corporate support services, including human resources, recruiting, information technology, security and accounting. She oversees staff and vendors to ensure quality delivery and customer service excellence to our Artemis clients.
For over 15 years, Mary has worked in various areas of corporate operations, most recently as Vice President of Operations at Aptive, where she led some of the company’s most important growth initiatives, including various strategic systems implementations and integrations, strategy development and process optimizations. Prior to Aptive, she was the Chief People and Culture Officer at Definitive Logic.
Background
- M.A., Human Resource Management Federal Concentration, Catholic University of America
- B.A., Psychology, Marymount University
Max Entman is a proven communications and marketing leader with a track record of launching strategic, results-driven campaigns and public awareness programs. He guides project teams as they deliver strategic and innovative solutions to Aptive’s clients. He also leads business development activities, helping Aptive expand its strategic communications and recruitment marketing footprint across the federal government.
He has over 13 years of experience in the communications and marketing field with a focus on delivering digital and creative solutions to accelerate innovation and transform target audience behavior. In addition to experience with numerous federal agencies, Max brings the perspective of leading work with large corporations and leading non-profit organizations to the development of solutions for Aptive’s public sector clients. From enterprise website transformations to targeted digital campaigns with multimillion-dollar budgets, he leads teams to drive business value for Aptive’s clients.
- M.A., Global Communication, The George Washington University
- B.A., Public Policy and International Relations, Duke University
Clive Ballard is responsible for the continued advancement of Aptive’s Veteran health services, providing strategic direction that ensures Aptive’s cutting-edge health care solutions and capabilities remain firmly focused on Veteran-centered outcomes.
With more than 20 years of commercial and federal management consulting experience, Clive brings a wealth of experience in the design, planning and implementation of strategic plans, management system frameworks and other mechanisms focused on continual improvement, mission enhancement and operational efficiency—particularly in the health care and hospital settings. Through his work with numerous federal clients, Clive has led delivery of, and served as a technical advisor for, national strategy, policy and guidance; program evaluation and performance measurement; multi-stakeholder working groups and technical advisory committee facilitation; and enterprise-wide program implementation efforts.
Prior to joining Aptive, he was a Senior Manager in Deloitte’s Operations Transformation practice, leading efforts across federal health accounts and within the Quality, Safety and Improvement Offering.
- M.S., Project Management, The George Washington University
- BSc, Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh
- Business Strategy Certificate, McKinsey Academy
- Certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Emily is an experienced leader in contingent workforce solutions with robust skills in management, operations and leadership. She leads a nationwide staffing initiative for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) where she oversees a program management office and is responsible for organizing, directing and managing all aspects of contract operations. She also designs and implements innovative approaches to manage the 40+ partners, staffing agencies, clinical associations, credential verification organizations and universities that support the VHA initiative.
With a wealth of expertise spanning more than a decade, she has honed her abilities across several sectors. She has overseen portfolios of strategic workforce solutions clients for national hospitals and health systems made up of 150 hospital facilities. She leads cross-functional teams of client-facing individuals to provide exceptional service delivery to clients and collaborates across service lines to provide optimized workforce solutions.
In prior roles, Emily led Managed Service Programs for major health systems with close to 75 facilities across several states. She has secured hundreds of millions of dollars in contract renewals and grown revenue portfolios by 40% and business portfolios by over 350%. Emily specializes in building strong relationships and fostering long-term partnerships, actively participating in fundamental people and process strategy improvement initiatives.
- B.A., International Business, Minor, Spanish, University of Central Florida
- Founding Board Member, One Hope United
Meredith Singh is a change management consultant with over 16 years of experience providing program oversight, educational product development and health care quality data reporting and analysis to federal and non-profit clients. She leads a team of high-performing professionals to support the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Healthcare Transformation to develop and sustain VHA’s High Reliability Organization enterprise-wide implementation plan. Meredith also leads Aptive’s efforts to support the VA Caregiver Support Program, which offers clinical services to caregivers of eligible and covered Veterans enrolled in the VA health care system.
Meredith has served several federal and non-profit clients, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Her knowledge of VHA culture and organizational structures enables her to accelerate cultural adoption across targeted stakeholder groups.
She delivers high-quality, timely work products and services within budgets ranging from $25K to $75M and is proficient in managing resources and staff. Meredith has led large numbers of staff across four different modernization efforts, including four partner companies to manage VHA’s Journey to High Reliability, VA Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients and Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs.
- MBA, George Mason University
- B.A., St. Mary’s College of Maryland
- Certified Professional, Patient Safety
- Prosci Certified Change Management Practitioner (CCMP)
- Certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
- Certified Project Management Professional (PMP)
Jessica Overbeck is an expert communications and marketing professional with more than 15 years of experience leading large-scale federal communications campaigns for the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the Defense Health Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. Over the course of her career, she has been instrumental in the development of the National Strategy for Preventing Veteran Suicide, the creation and rollout of a new brand identity for VA’s Vet Centers and VBA’s campaign encouraging Veterans to file claims for disability compensation related to toxic exposures.
Under her leadership, her team won 23 Hermes and MarCom awards in 2021 for a variety of print, digital, video, social media and human-centered design research products. In addition, she wrote, edited and managed content for the Armed Services Blood Program’s (ASBP) website, monthly newsletter and social media platforms. The ASBP’s website and newsletter content went on to win a total of four Army Major General Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Awards.