Mission Possible Podcast

Chad Kim
  • 5.0 (6)
  • TECHNOLOGY

Welcome to the Mission Possible Podcast, where we dive deep into the stories of extraordinary individuals who push the boundaries of what’s achievable. Each episode features leaders, visionaries, and changemakers who share their personal journeys, pivotal moments, and practical wisdom on overcoming challenges, driving innovation, and creating meaningful impact. Join us as we explore resilience, purpose, and the power of embracing uncertainty to transform obstacles into opportunities. 

  1. APR 27

    Priya Dalwadi: Not a Calculator

    Season two of Mission Possible closes with Priya Dalwadi, B/CORE's CFO and a finance leader who refuses to be the calculator. Priya grew up watching her father build a CPA practice now in its forty-fourth year, with clients still flying across the country to see him. The inheritance shaped her belief in finance as a human discipline. She brought it with her to GW, into Lockheed Martin's financial leadership program, and through her first GovCon rotation in pricing where she sat in the back of every room and had to learn to use her voice. She was the lead pricer on a fifty million dollar program win, the biggest award in her division at the time. In this episode, Priya talks about the early setback that forced her to speak up, the art of subcontractor negotiation, how she builds high-trust teams, and why pushing back on low-value work is a leadership move. She tackles imposter syndrome by admitting what she does not know. She frames AI and automation as tools to make finance faster, never as replacements for human judgment. Her advice to young finance professionals is simple: open mind, patience, grace, and a network you build one shoulder tap at a time. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:48 Meet Priya Dalwadi 01:33 The CPA's Daughter 03:16 First GovCon Rotation 04:33 Pricing Explained 05:56 Sitting in the Back of the Room 09:06 Negotiation and Relationships 10:44 Building High-Trust Teams 15:08 Imposter Syndrome 17:35 AI in Finance 19:27 Advice and Workload 21:58 Payoff and Closing Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    24 min

  2. APR 13

    Jake Huffman: One Level Deeper

    Senior technologist Jake Huffman grew up in a North Carolina county with one stoplight, got rejected from architecture school, and fell into engineering because someone told him he wasn't an artist. A sophomore materials science class changed his direction. A steel plant nearly scared him out of metallurgy. A Coast Guard repair center gave him helicopter parts to build with no experience. And a graduate school math problem introduced him to writing code. Every turn came from the same instinct: go one level deeper than the job asks you to. In this episode, Jake talks about why boring systems fall apart, what overconfidence looks like from the inside, and the moment he realized it was more important for his team to function well than for him to be right. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 01:01 One Stoplight, One Wrestling Team 02:50 Rejected by Art School 06:42 White Hot Steel and Walking Away 08:11 Building Helicopter Parts for the Coast Guard 11:03 Craft Over Mission 15:04 When Systems Don't Fit in One Head 18:34 The Blind Spots of Big-Picture Thinking 24:44 Team Function Over Being Right 27:41 Scar Tissue 30:16 Learn the Old Stuff First 32:58 Build Your Own RAG 34:44 What AI Should Scare You About 36:40 Wrap Up Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    37 min

  3. MAR 30

    Troy Scoran: Say Yes, Then Go

    Troy Scoran is a technologist at B/CORE who built his career by raising his hand before anyone asked. He grew up in a western Pennsylvania town of two thousand people and three stoplights, got recruited off LinkedIn, and moved to Tysons Corner to join a fifteen-person startup with one condition: don't box me in. Chad and Zil brought Troy on to talk about what it looks like to build a career through initiative. The conversation went somewhere honest. Troy described how saying yes to everything at a small company gave him a view of the entire business that most people his age never get. Now he's figuring out where to go deep and who to bring with him. The three of them land on something worth hearing: the people who raise their hand early are the ones who get to choose what they become later. This episode is for anyone who has been the youngest person in the room and earned their seat by showing up. For practitioners building range and wondering when to specialize. And for anyone mid-career who is shifting from learning everything to leading others through it. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome from the Plane  00:44 Peruvian Chicken and First Impressions  01:16 How Troy and Zil Connected  04:12 Three Stoplights and Sixty Graduates  05:58 Saying Yes to the Move  06:58 Corner Apartment in Tysons  08:13 Sports, Coaching, and Strategy  12:37 Keep Me in Pennsylvania  14:17 Imposter Syndrome as Butterflies  15:52 Taking Production Down Overnight  17:35 You're Already on the Team  19:48 The Trade-Offs of Range  21:57 JSON Meets SQL  22:55 Full Stack Mentality  24:53 From Taker to Multiplier Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    26 min

  4. MAR 16

    Sarika Lamont: The Cost of Standing Still

    Sarika Lamont is the Chief People Officer at a B2B technology company and a former GovCon talent leader. She built an integrated talent management framework from scratch, pitched it to two different CEOs, and now leads AI transformation from the people side of the house. Chad and Zil brought Sarika on to talk about what happens when organizations refuse to change how they develop people. The conversation went deeper than expected. Zil described what it feels like to outgrow your leadership. Sarika explained why counter-offers only buy you six months.  The three of them land on something worth hearing: AI did not create the gap between how we manage people and how people actually grow. AI made that gap impossible to ignore. This episode is for anyone who has sat through a performance review that had nothing to do with their actual performance. For leaders who know they need to get closer to the work but don't know how. And for engineers wondering whether the old career ladder still leads anywhere. 00:00 Welcome and Setup 01:21 Sarika's Path Into People 03:32 HR's Identity Crisis 06:15 The GovCon Talent Gap 08:30 Leaner Teams, More Pressure 13:27 Retention Is Not a Compensation Problem 17:17 Career Ladders That Slow People Down 19:42 Burning It to the Ground 21:28 AI Makes Feedback More Human 26:06 Leaders Who Won't Get Their Hands Dirty 28:59 The Engineering Skills Shift 31:21 Building Close to Value 33:05 Tossing the Old Playbook 33:59 From Tool Adoption to Mindset Shift 35:33 Tiger Teams and the Right Personas 37:18 Prompting Variability 38:48 Getting People Off the Sideline 41:58 Focus Fridays and the AI Council 44:11 The Great Equalizer 47:14 Accountability When Everyone Has Access 53:00 Sunday Scaries and What Drives People to Stay 57:21 Good People Want to Work With Good People Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    1h 5m

  5. MAR 2

    Courtney Kelly: The Accidental Strategist

    Courtney Kelly is the Chief Strategy Officer at C Speed. She grew up in a small Massachusetts town, trained in ballet for 15 years, studied history, and planned on law school. When that path closed, she landed in aerospace and defense consulting doing competitive intelligence and price-to-win work. From there she moved into Raytheon's strategy group and later KPMG, where she built a core philosophy: strategy only matters if you execute against it. In this episode, Courtney unpacks how she navigates ambiguity as a Type A introvert, why performative leadership falls flat, and what it feels like being the junior person in the room during M&A integrations. The conversation connects strategy to mission outcomes, breaks down integration tradeoffs, and gets honest about boundary-setting in an always-on culture. 00:00 Meet Courtney Kelly 01:47 Early Life and Ballet 02:33 The Accidental Strategist 04:46 Consulting in Defense 07:32 Strategy Meets Execution 09:50 Type A in Ambiguity 14:02 Mission Focus in Delivery 17:09 M&A Battle Scars 18:44 Why Companies Do M&A 23:33 Work-Life Balance Reality 30:23 Introvert Leadership 32:59 Reading the Room 34:30 The Ambiguity Muscle 37:21 No Playbook 40:18 Closing Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    42 min

  6. FEB 16

    Adam Chin: Algorithms for Human Connection

    Adam Chin is a cloud and software engineer who calls himself a "chaos domino pusher" and a "safe extrovert," someone energized in trusted spaces but drained when masking. He traces how moving often as a kid built his ability to connect quickly, read rooms, and use shared context to build relationships. That same approach led to meeting his wife at a concert. Adam credits early mentors for showing him what approachable, context-rich leadership looks like. He explains how curiosity, ego-free collaboration, and explaining the "why" shaped his professional growth. He also shares how he manages "swirl" when goals are unclear through rubber-ducking, writing down obstacles, and maintaining what he calls the "Adam backlog." The episode closes on AI adoption. Adam argues technologists need skepticism, stronger validation habits, and curiosity about how systems work. He worries about losing the human context once found in places like Stack Overflow and forums and makes the case for preserving community as AI tools accelerate.  Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    37 min

  7. FEB 2

    Sue Gordon: Nose Down, Head Up

    Sue Gordon served as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and spent a long career at the CIA, rising to senior positions across all four Agency directorates. In this conversation, Sue shares the framework that guided her through an unconventional career path. She started as a zoology major doing Soviet missile analysis. She was moved off prestigious assignments she loved. Each setback became the transportation to her next success. Her approach is simple: nose down, head up. Master your current job while staying aware of the bigger mission your work serves. When setbacks hit, let go of who you were so you can become something you never could have been. Sue also addresses the challenges facing new talent entering the workforce today. She argues that context and vision matter more than ever. Organizations have less time to develop leaders, and the world presents so many crises that none feels big enough to rally around. Her advice: find a purpose, commit to it, and learn to make decisions before certainty arrives. This episode delivers a personal and practical look at career resilience from someone who navigated decades of transformation in national security.  Timestamps 00:00 Introduction and Welcome 00:20 Setting the Stage for Sue's Story 02:23 Starting as a Zoologist at CIA 05:24 Learning on the Job and Advancing Knowledge 08:30 The Nose Down, Head Up Framework 12:47 Overcoming Perceptions and Proving Value 18:47 Four Major Setbacks That Shaped Sue's Career 25:45 Letting Go of Who You Were 27:00 Navigating Vulnerability and Finding Support 28:12 Accepting Hard Truths and Moving Forward 30:44 Asking What You Want from This Moment 34:23 Vision, Purpose, and Decision Making for New Talent 38:47 The Second Lieutenant Moment 41:07 Leadership in a Modern Workforce 44:39 Why Context Is the Missing Piece 50:01 Why This Is the Moment to Be Part Of Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    52 min

  8. JAN 19

    Season Two Kickoff: Balancing Tech, Work-Life, and Human Connections

    In this episode, Chad Kim and Zil Vyas kick off the second season of their podcast with a discussion on the importance of human connections, staying curious, and learning from each other in a rapidly changing tech landscape. They reflect on the challenges and growth from their first season and share their personal goals for 2026. Topics include the importance of humility, the balance between work and personal life, building relationships, and the evolving roles within their tech company. The episode promises a line-up of diverse and interesting guests, each contributing unique experiences and insights. Thank you for spending time with us today! If you're energized by the conversation and eager to see how bold ideas translate into real‑world mission advantage, explore the Bcore ecosystem. At Bcore, we're uniting exceptional people and cutting‑edge technology to accelerate mission impact and advance national security. Learn more, connect with our team, and discover opportunities to collaborate at bcore.com. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

    28 min
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5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Welcome to the Mission Possible Podcast, where we dive deep into the stories of extraordinary individuals who push the boundaries of what’s achievable. Each episode features leaders, visionaries, and changemakers who share their personal journeys, pivotal moments, and practical wisdom on overcoming challenges, driving innovation, and creating meaningful impact. Join us as we explore resilience, purpose, and the power of embracing uncertainty to transform obstacles into opportunities. 

Information

  • Creator
    Chad Kim
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Mission Possible Podcast
  • Show Website
    Mission Possible Podcast