Jay Challa
Chief Executive Officer, Rural Empowerment Inc
Jay Challa has over 20 years of experience in operations, business development, project management, and technical management. He is the Chief Executive OfficerChief Executive Officer of Rural Empowerment Inc. and Managing Director at Shivar Consultants. Prior to that, he co-founded AceInfo in 2000, and watched the company grow into a thriving, high quality Federal IT contractor recognized as a leader in the field.
Mr. Challa is a PMI-certified PMP and a certified Professional Engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia, State of Maryland, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Prior to AceInfo, he worked at consulting companies such as BearingPoint, EarthTech (Tyco International Company), and Ed Zublin AG. Mr. Challa began his career as a staff engineer working on military family housing projects in Germany and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in less than two years, he became the project manager on that account.
Under his leadership and outstanding management capabilities, AceInfo has grown from a two-person, $50,000 revenue company in 2001 to a mid-sized leader serving the Federal Government market space. The company has won many awards from Federal Government agencies, including the SDB Contractor of the Year from the US Department of Agriculture and the National Directors Award from the US Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency. Mr. Challa received Fifty Influential Minorities in Business award from Minority Business Enterprise Network in 2006 and was on the cover of the Minority Enterprise Advocate magazine in 2009. Mr. Challa lives in Herndon with his wife Kavita and his daughter and son, Shivani and Varun.
Mr. Challa received a a Master’s Degree in Engineering in 1987 from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering in 1984 from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in India.
