Devin Brown is the director of IT operations and development for Tria’s work for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Financial Services Center. His role is fully remote, with monthly visits to a customer office.
What accomplishments during your time at Tria are you most proud of?
Coming from the private sector, learning the government lingo was tough in the beginning. Once I got that down, it made it easy to do the job, and from there things just took off.
I’ve never been a big bragger; I let my work do the talking for me. When people come and see the work and check the report card, the results speak loudly for what we do. We’ve received nothing less than excellent scores on our Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) since I’ve been in leadership here. We’ve also received all perfect scores on our Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP). I attribute that to an amazing team.
Also, our team participates in internal hackathons within the government. You get placed on a team, and you’re trying to solve a problem. They don’t give you the problem until the day of the event. It’s a two-day event. You’re behind closed doors all day. The last two years Tria has been on the winning team. That’s another big accomplishment for us, and it reflects well on Tria: on the government side, everyone up to almost the secretary receives an email about it.
What’s your favorite part of working at Tria?
I like the support. I’ve been told “no” very few times when I’m trying to do something for my team to increase morale or keep people happy. With more employees working remotely post-COVID it’s more challenging to engage team members and keep them excited about the work we’re doing and reminding them that, “Hey, you do have support.”
I appreciate that Tria leadership allows me to do things with the team to keep them engaged. The results are awesome; our team gets monthly kudos from the customer for the work we’re doing because our team is happy with the company they work for.
How do you boost engagement on a remote team?
We try to do a team happy hour once a month in Austin. We have about 100 developers who work on our contract, and we invite anyone in a 50-mile radius.
Also, a couple of our teammates play cricket competitively in Austin. Tria has sponsored the uniforms. Outside of work, it’s cool to be able to escape and play a little bit and have the team come together to watch these guys win the championship, which they did last year.
How do you find purpose in your job?
Some of my brothers, my father-in-law, and my stepfather are all military veterans. Servicemembers sacrifice their lives to give us an opportunity to do this job. We are blessed and lucky enough to get paid for it. This is our opportunity to give back to those individuals, to show, “Look, we care enough about you that when you go and request a claim or when there’s a problem with your check, we’re building things to fix those things — to make your years after your service better.” That’s the work we’re doing here.
I get up every day knowing I’m going to serve somebody, and that really motivates me. There’s no more joy for me than to be able to provide those services to those individuals who gave so much for us.
What do you do in your free time?
I like to play golf and poker, and I like to travel. I also enjoy working out; maintaining a healthy lifestyle is very important to me. I’m a pretty boring fellow. It’s work, gym, family – rinse and repeat – that’s pretty much me. I do have an alter ego occasionally: maybe when some music is playing, I like to shake a tail feather or two. But you’d really have to catch me on a good day for that.
