Kenneth Buck

Dr. Buck is a former senior executive with over thirty-years of public sector experience as an innovator and change-agent in the disciplines of: Leadership Development, Organizational Development, Human Capital Management, and Change Management. Adept at designing and fielding simulation models and algorithms to predict and assess organizational efficiency. Highly successful with developing & applying predictive models for workforce staffing and empirically identifying competency gaps. 

His federal career included senior-level acquisition positions in large complex federal agencies such as: Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, as well as the General Services Administration and the U.S. Postal Service. He served as an operational contracting officer for the first 10 years of his career at DoD and the Postal Service and held the role of Senior Procurement Executive at the Department of Commerce in the mid-1990s.

At Veterans Affairs, he served as the Director for Acquisition Policy and Acquisition Career Manager, overseeing the training, development and certification of the Department’s acquisition workforce. These duties included overseeing the planning and implementation of a VA-wide Management Academy in Frederick, Maryland that continues to train and develop approximately 3,000 employees annually in the areas of leadership, program management, and acquisition management. 

At the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Buck served as a senior executive in the Office of the Secretary, integrating disparate management functions across all major Components and strengthening acquisition management. He received the Secretary’s Meritorious Service Award in 2015 for his leadership developing and implementing a risk mitigation model to reduce organizational risk. 

Dr. Buck’s post-government career includes a successful executive coaching and consulting practice, where he assists organizations with developing and implementing strategies to improve management efficiencies and reduce risk. He was a Fellow in Change Management through The Johns Hopkins University and received his Ph.D. in Human & Organizational Systems in 2006. He has taught graduate students at George Washington University and currently serves as an instructor in the Procurement and Contract Management graduate certificate program at the University of Virginia