Where Strategy Becomes Execution.

Connecting mission priorities to investment decisions through resource strategy, portfolio governance, and decision intelligence —backed by nearly 12 years of defense and federal experience.

For nearly 12 years, she has helped defense and federal leaders turn mission priorities into resource decisions and execution plans. Her work brings financial and program information together to clarify priorities, weigh tradeoffs, and support actionable decisions—connecting strategy with the resources to sustain it and the execution to make it real.

Throughout her career, she has operated across some of the federal government's most complex defense and civilian organizations. Her defense work has supported senior leaders within the Department of War, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSD(A&S)), predecessor acquisition and enterprise integration organizations within the former OUSD(AT&L), and Enterprise Information (EI) within Acquisition Resources and Analysis (ARA) under the former Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (OUSD(AT&L)). Her defense experience also includes the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller (OUSD(C)), the Department of the Navy, and Army Program Executive Offices. Her civilian experience includes the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Information and Technology. Across these organizations, her work has supported modernization priorities, competing funding needs, and complex program portfolios. At VA, she served as the planning and programming lead for a 21-program information technology portfolio and developed its multiyear resource plan. Her broader work includes resource strategy and decision support for multibillion-dollar defense investments.

Her experience includes roles with Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI, Quantech, LMI, and The Purdy Group. At Booz Allen Hamilton, she supported Department of the Navy (DON) N1 resource planning and the Career Training Continuum, as well as DON Chief Information Officer (CIO)/N1 enterprise IT transformation. At CACI, she led Army Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) and acquisition financial management for Program Executive Office (PEO) Combat Support & Combat Service Support and Project Manager (PM) Expeditionary Energy & Sustainment Systems, supporting tactical power and sustainment portfolios and advising Acquisition Category (ACAT) I–III program managers. Her VA portfolio encompassed $200M+ annually across 21 programs. Earlier work with Quantech and The Purdy Group included enterprise acquisition analysis, Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Comptroller support, coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), and Department-level portfolio reviews. At The Purdy Group, she identified $M+ in contract optimization opportunities and contributed to $400M+ in acquisition and resource efficiencies.

She helps senior leaders determine what to fund, where to accept risk, and how to translate mission priorities into execution. She connects budgets with program performance to make competing priorities, resource constraints, and delivery tradeoffs explicit—equipping leaders with actionable decision packages grounded in financial and operational evidence. From acquisition planning through execution reviews, she turns complex information into clear priorities, critical dependencies, and concrete next steps that guide resource allocation and program oversight.

Her technical foundation connects resource planning, acquisition oversight, and financial analysis. In Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) and Army PPBES, her expertise spans Program Objective Memorandum (POM) and Budget Estimate Submission (BES) development, Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) development, and budget formulation and execution. Her financial-management work covers appropriation and component alignment, funds control, spend plans, obligation and expenditure phasing, congressional budget justification, unfunded requirements, issue papers, reclamas, continuing-resolution impacts, and reprogramming actions. For acquisition oversight, she brings expertise in the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, Major Capability and Middle Tier acquisition pathways, program baselines, milestone reviews, life-cycle cost estimates, affordability analysis, Earned Value Management, and cost, schedule, and performance tradeoffs. Her analytical toolkit includes Power BI, advanced Excel, Power Query, Power Pivot, Power Platform, Power Automate, and defense financial and acquisition systems—including Army Vantage, AE2S, ADVANA, PBIS, PDOCS, DAMIR, DAVE, GFEBS, and GFEBS-SA—supporting forecasting, risk analysis, audit readiness, and executive oversight.

She also strengthens the processes and tools that turn decisions into action. She has led and trained teams, built repeatable processes, and helped clients navigate changes in planning and portfolio management. At VA, she built planning, resource, and program-evaluation architecture linking investments, budget lines, execution, risk, and service outcomes, and standardized portfolio governance and cost transparency. For Navy clients, she developed executive dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs), risk registers, corrective-action trackers, standard operating procedures (SOPs), decision logs, and program-review packages. She also designed and implemented an AI-enabled unfunded-requirements and executive-reporting capability adopted by the program office, reducing repetitive manual work, improving transparency across resource sponsors and PEO stakeholders, and accelerating resourcing decisions while closing a critical reporting gap. Her approach to transformation extends beyond recommendations and presentations to practical processes and tools people can use.

Working with senior executives, program managers, and cross-functional teams has shaped her approach to complex challenges: understand the mission, ask thoughtful questions, and make the evidence useful. She brings a strategic perspective without losing sight of the details and emphasizes solutions that serve both the leaders making decisions and the teams responsible for carrying them out.

Her advisory work has supported Senior Executive Service (SES) leaders, Flag Officers, Program Executive Officers, and Program Managers, integrating requirements, acquisition, financial management, contracting, logistics, engineering, and sustainment perspectives. She earned four Best Overall Employee Awards and four Performance & Recognition Excellence Awards across Army acquisition and resource-management operations, along with senior executive recognition for clearer, timelier, and more defensible acquisition and resource decisions in OUSD governance forums.

Her development of Defense Decision Intelligence extends her focus on evidence-based decisions into a product designed to connect program, financial, acquisition, risk, and performance information into decision-ready insight. The goal is to help leaders understand how investments support capability outcomes, recognize emerging risks, and see the evidence behind their choices. She is exploring artificial intelligence and automation as practical tools for this work, with traceability, human judgment, and accountability at the center.

Her independent work includes a 2026 strategy memorandum on accountable military artificial intelligence governance and portfolio oversight, proposed controls connecting responsible AI principles with acquisition, resource, risk, and executive decision processes, and a 90-day portfolio pilot concept. Through MayraUgaz.com, she presents executive case studies, original professional writing, and perspectives on defense strategy, PPBE, acquisition, modernization, responsible AI, and decision intelligence for federal and commercial audiences.

Her focus is on defensible investments, effective oversight, and workable solutions—bringing financial discipline, acquisition experience, and a practical understanding of execution to complex resource decisions.