I'd like to send out a warm welcome to one of our newest hires, Michael Walsh. Michael will be helping the company run, grow and manage our Public Sector business - both Program Management and Business Development. He also is responsible for opening our official field office in Washington, DC on Connecticut Avenue. With this move, and additional hires in the DC area , we feel confident that we will be able to better serve our customers and partners in this domain even more effectively.

So, why has Acquia decided to invest in a dedicated team to service government, intergovernmental, and public policy organizations? With public sector organizations such as the Department of Education, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, White House, United States Army, House Democratic Caucus, and World Bank, and many others aggressively moving to the Drupal platform - including a couple of other large wins that we cannot announce yet, it is clear that Drupal adoption in the public sector has reached a tipping point. As evidenced by these examples, Drupal already is in widespread use across all levels of domestic and international government - federal, state, and local. We therefore felt it was time to grow our local resource base in Washington.

Michael arrives at Acquia from Forum One Communications, where he served as a Project Director. In that role, he was responsible for business development in the government sector. He also oversaw the creation and delivery of online campaigns and web strategies for government and non-government clients designed to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies. These projects succeeded in converting high profile clients - including the US Army - to Drupal. More importantly, his work with government clients enabled him to establish himself as an evangelist for the Drupal Community in the public sector, including serving as a keynote moderator at DrupalCon and a featured panelist at the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference.

Michael is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (BA) and The School of Advanced International Studies (MA). He completed executive education at Harvard Business School and The Wharton School and professional training at the United States Institute of Peace. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Certificate of Appreciation from the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has published two defense of innovation papers and filed one patent application (as an employee of Microsoft). He also recently served as a Next Generation Fellow under the Next Generation Project at the American Assembly. Prior to Forum One, Michael previously served as a Senior Marketing Communications Manager at Microsoft Corporation and a Management Consultant for R&D programs at Northrop Grumman Corporation.

We are extremely excited to have Michael on board as our Managing Director in the Public Sector -- look for even bigger things to be happening in the near future. "Watch this space" as they say....