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The 9,000-Person Firm That Runs the Government's Least Glamorous Machinery
It started in 1969 as a fund for inner-city businesses. Today ICF models the power grid, rebuilds towns after storms, and quietly runs some of the federal programs you have never heard of.
Alpha Industries, Inc.
Alpha Industries is an American outerwear company that started in 1959 as a U.S. Department of Defense contract manufacturer and turned its government-spec flight jackets into a global fashion label. It produced the MA-1 bomber, the M-65 field coat and the N-3B parka to military specification for decades, then began selling civilian versions in 1970 under a distinct three-bar label. Now in its third generation of family ownership under CEO Michael Cirker, the company sells through wholesale accounts, department stores, licensed sports collections, its own e-commerce site and a small number of physical stores, and it uses a steady stream of designer and streetwear collaborations - Supreme, Vetements, BAPE, Lee, Cecilie Bahnsen among them - to keep a 1963 pattern relevant to buyers who were not born when it was drafted.
Josiah Gruber
Josiah Gruber is the CEO of Scout Space, a Reston, Virginia company building sensors and software to detect, track and characterize objects in orbit. An optical and RF remote-sensing engineer with more than 15 years of hands-on experience, he joined Scout in 2023 as an engineer, rose to VP of Engineering and then CTO, and took the top job in late 2025. Under his leadership Scout raised an $18M Series A in May 2026 and is putting its Owl optical payload on the inaugural flight of Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft.