Ms. Susan Celis
Acting Director

 
Ms. Celis has served the Department of Defense (DoD) for over 30 years; starting at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1988 until 2004, where she held a variety of positions in financial management, personnel management, program analysis/management, computer information systems development, and training. It was during this period in her career that she became involved with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Next, she served as the U.S. Army SBIR Program Manager from 2004-2008, where she developed and successfully implemented several program and system modernization initiatives. For eleven years she served as the SBIR/STTR Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where she focused on creating an environment that considers small business concerns as a primary source of innovative solutions. In 2019, she joined the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering in the Small Business and Technology Partnerships (SBTP) Office to manage the DoD SBIR/STTR programs, and is currently serving as the Acting Director.  Ms. Celis holds a Bachelor of Science in Management and Computer Information Systems from Park University, and a Master of Public Administration from American University.

Mr. Matthew B. Williams
Technology Portfolio Manager

 
Mr. Matthew Williams is the Technology Portfolio Manager for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s / Small Business and Technology Partnerships Office. Mr. Williams manages transition activities designed to assist Small Businesses Concerns in getting their technology developed and inserted into Acquisition Program of Records, Systems and Sub-Systems used by our warfighters across the agencies. Prior to his current assignment, Mr. Williams was the NAVAIR SBIR Commercialization Readiness Program (CRP) Manager. The mission of NAVAIR’s CRP program is to provide NAVAIR Program Managers (PMA’s), Competency Managers and Naval Air Warfare Centers (NAWC’s) with transition funding and strategies for state of the art SBIR technologies to be transitioned and/or integrated to NAVAIR Acquisition Program of Records, Research Laboratories and Fleet Readiness Centers. Mr. Williams was also NAVAIR’s Phase III Contracting Manager, overseeing contracting support / services to five (5) Program Executive Officers (PEO’s), thirty-three (33) Programs (PMA’s) and five (5) Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC’s) - managing over 400 contract actions – valued in excess of $400M annually.