Employee Spotlight
Mary Siemucha
Technical Writer, Catapult Headquarters
Mary Siemucha, Technical Writer
After raising two daughters as a stay-at-home mom, Mary Siemucha, Technical Writer, decided to earn her Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Management.
In the 1980s, she landed her first position as a Production Manager at a growing software firm. She managed three documentation specialists and supported 13 writers, each of whom worked on a different product supporting a mainframe operating system.
Two years later Mary took a job at IBM as a senior writer working on manuals for speech recognition software, documentation for application programming interfaces, and end-user guides.
Mary had been at IBM for 13 years as a senior technical writer before joining Catapult in June 2002 as a proposal manager. One of the first things she worked on was an internal effort to set up a proposal library to put processes and procedures in place to help the company take a methodical approach to responding to Requests for Proposal (RFPs).
The library is still in use today. “It’s amazing how many times people will need something that’s four or five years old,” Mary says. From a historical perspective, the library has been invaluable.
Mary notes that today the response to an RFP is more process-oriented and proactive. “We are at a higher level than we used to be,” she says. “We are going after bigger opportunities, so we have to know about them three to six months before the RFP is issued so we are prepared.”
Mary explains that Catapult’s executive management and business development team stay in touch with contracting officers and apprise other contacts within federal agencies about pending projects and determine in advance whether it is a project the company should bid on.
If Catapult bids on a project, the proposal team is engaged. Led by Eugene Hoffman, Director of Proposals Services, Mary and fellow Senior Proposal Manager, Monique Llanos, frame and edit new content. Kat Savery, Proposal Production Specialist, rounds out a proposal by ensuring it adheres to a specific format and style.
What makes the RFP process so much smoother today, Mary says, is that Catapult’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have become an integral part of the process.
“SMEs are critical to producing a winning proposal because they know what bases to cover and can give us information that makes a stronger and more comprehensive technical response to an RFP,” she says.
Mary lives in Montgomery Village, MD with her husband Jim. Outside of spending time with family, Mary enjoys her favorite pastime, quilting, through which she has created award-winning quilts.
“Quilting requires the same attention to detail that proposals do,” she says.
Today Mary works for Catapult as a Technical Writer on a project with the National Labor Relations Board.
