Today we’d like to introduce you to Taija (Taj) Thomas.
Hi Taija, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in Washington, DC as the oldest child in a single-parent household with 2 younger siblings. As we relocated pretty frequently, we moved to Maryland (Prince Georges County) when I was in the 6th grade and that’s when I recognized my enjoyment for electronics, gaming, and computers. In elementary and middle school, I truly enjoyed going to the computer lab as infrequently as we visited but when I did go to work with my mom at The World Bank, I was always allowed to mess around w/the Macintosh (Apple) standalone computer in her office.
I was gifted an Atari 2600 gaming system for Christmas that I enjoyed, but with curiosity I also took the Atari apart and put it back together with it continuing to operate. During my 4 years of High School, I took at least 2 computer/programming classes per year including keyboarding (I and II) and I was up to typing around 50-55 words per minute with few errors in the 10th grade. This is when I truly knew I enjoyed computers and programming but had no idea at the time about the careers or possibilities on the horizon.
I continued my computer/programming/IT journey through college and trade school and landed my first job as a contractor providing Tier 1 Help Desk support for CompuCom at a customer site for Marriott International in April 1998. I then moved on to gov’t contracting and spent about 16 years with USDA as a subject matter expert, technical lead, and manager, and then my final employee position as a Senior Manager for a private healthcare company supporting Medicaid/Medicare IT Systems and Solutions delivery nationally.
Lion Solutions was organized on January 19th, 2016, as I continued to work for my prior employer and on January 1st, 2019 is when I committed 110% of my employment to growing and developing Lion Solutions as a full-time employee, President, and Principal which I would’ve never thought this is where this technology journey was taking me.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting a business is very simple to do and low cost to organize but truly growing, developing, and understanding all that comes with the aspects of growing a successful business is the most challenging. Even though for me, most of the technology aspects were not due to my technology experience in private and gov’t contracting but trying to understand which market and vertical where you can be successful and provide value is the most challenging. Truly understanding your differentiator is very important and critical to selling, marketing, and winning opportunities.
Figuring out how to fund your business once you no longer have other means of finances to leverage could be painful. Understanding that starting off your business that you want to keep your expenses and overhead as low as possible but make the right investments and decisions to grow and sustain the little operations that you do have knowing at the early “existence” stage of your business, that you will not qualify for a business loan or credit line, so you have to be strategic and learn all you can across the essentials of business growth and back office fundamentals wearing many hats and playing many roles in the organization until you reach the next stages of “survival and success” where other resources could then be leveraged.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Lion Solutions, LLC?
Lion Solutions is a certified disadvantaged small business that specializes in providing Enterprise IT Services and Solutions to public, private, and non-profit organizations since January 2016. With over 20+ years of experience delivering IT Enterprise Services to our customers. We focus on delivering modernized solutions to support digital transformation efforts in driving customer missions forward leveraging a collaborative approach of doing business into the future. We bring great value by leveraging our subject matter expertise in streamlining IT service management and infrastructure operations while modernizing data security solutions that strengthen and improve customers’ continuity strategy to further drive successful outcomes.
Our core service offerings are IT Support and Professional Services, IT Managed Services, Operations and Maintenance, Data Center Operations, and Data Security Operations, Continuity and Contingency Planning, IT Project Management, IT Staff Augmentation, Audio/Visual Services, and Telecommunication Operations.
At Lion Solutions our core values and practices are built around Leadership, Integrity, Opportunity, and Network (collaboration) which are core to our success for our customers and community. We have been positioning ourselves to become more available and accessible to our gov’t customers while building strategic partnerships and collaborative relationships with our government customers across local, state and federal verticals.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Lion Solutions is truly committed to customer service and community support. We believe that engraining the customer and community success first mindset into the backbone of the company will drive us to a high plateau and continue to challenge our possibilities and ultimate success that leads to positive impact.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lionsolutions.com
- Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/lionsolutionsllc - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/lionsolutionsllc - LinkedIn: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/taj-thomas
