Jon Smith has served for 16 years active duty and drilling reserve as a Naval Aviator and Unmanned Aerial System pilot and contracting officer, completing a tour in Iraq flying combat missions (on the same crew as our company President Glen “Steve-O” Dakan), and deployments to Africa and South America. Now as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Selected Reserve, his second career is a government contracting expert and COVID-19 venture advisor.
As our day to day leader and majority owner of Blue Venture Advisors (BVA), Jon’s role combines his DoD experience with his federal contracting background. Jon has nearly a decade of government contracting experience, having secured funding and managed multi-million dollar contracts as Prime Contractor for DoD in areas such as weapons development and aviation.
He founded a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) consulting business for Unmanned Aviation and has used that experience to apply for Blue Venture Advisor’s SDVOSB status. Jon has partnered with universities and government agencies including NASA, FAA, Aerospace States Association (ASA) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). He has provided DoD Prime Contractor oversight for multiple private supplier contracts. He has certifications as both a Contracting Officer Representative and a Government Flight Representative. He uses this experience at Blue Venture Advisors to better understand what the Federal government expects from their contractors and suppliers. Jon led the development of BVA’s unique supplier vetting process, ensuring suppliers have the highest degrees of ethics and performance under government contracts.
Jon earned a BS in computer science from the United States Naval Academy and has the following government contract certifications from the Defense Acquisition University: Contracting Officer Representative; Acquisitions Systems Planning RD&E – Systems Engineering; Project Management; Lean Six Sigma Yellow belt. He has FAA airplane qualifications of Single and Multi-Engine Commercial Pilot.
Jon is married to Faith, and they have two children, Jonathan (5 yrs), and Thomas
(2 yrs), and they live in Kansas City metro.
