Dick Eassom is Vice President of Corporate Support at SMA, Inc., leading and providing a variety of support functions to headquarters personnel and field associates, including client proposals and presentations, and website design and content management. He has held numerous roles since joining SMA (then SM&A) as a field associate proposal professional in 1998, including Vice President of Information Technology and Knowledge Management, Director of Project Management, and Director of Product Development and Operations Support.
Mr. Eassom has 30 years of experience developing winning international proposals in Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA. Dick is a Certified Fellow of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) and served on the APMP international Board of Directors as Secretary, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Executive Officer. He was Co-Chair of APMP international annual conferences in 2007 and 2011, and he continues to serve APMP as Past Chair for the APMP Western Chapter. APMP inducted Dick as a Fellow in 2004, and recognized his contributions to the organization in 2009 with the William C. McRea Founders Award.
In a break from SM&A, Dick was an independent proposal consultant associated with the CORTAC Group, providing proposal management and development support on several Government healthcare information technology, and defense integrated logistics support opportunities.
Dick is an acknowledged expert in the use of Microsoft Word to produce proposals and other complex documents. In the guise of his alter ego, Wordman, he wrote over 40 articles for the APMP Perspective newsletter, the Journal of the APMP, and continues to present at annual and chapter conferences, and chapter meetings.
Prior to joining SM&A, Dick had a 21-year career at GEC-Marconi Communications Ltd. (GMCL) in the United Kingdom in a variety of roles, finally as Marketing Communications Manager for the Military Communications Division, where he became involved in proposal development. He was previously Technical Manager for Military Product Development, responsible for a large department developing naval and tactical high-frequency radio equipment. Dick started his career at GMCL in field services, working in the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, the USA, and the United Kingdom.
Dick has a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.
