Cycurion Inc., a McLean cybersecurity solutions firm set to go public via a SPAC merger this year, has appointed a new CEO to guide it through its next phase of growth.
Kevin Kelly, the former CEO of cybersecurity company Halo Privacy and executive recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles (NYSE:HSII), has taken over the CEO role from Cycurion founder Emmit McHenry, who will remain chairman. The move, which took effect Tuesday, is meant to give McHenry more time to focus on the growth initiatives, including potential mergers and acquisitions, while Kelly runs the day-to-day management of the business.
“We, as a company, needed someone who fit our value system, someone who had put their feet in the tech pool, and most importantly, someone with public company experience in managing a growing enterprise and who has a strong understanding of capital markets and shareholders,” McHenry said in an interview.
Cycurion announced in November that it is merging with New York-based blank-check company Western Acquisition Ventures and subsequently going public. The company, which McHenry founded in 2017, expects to raise $113 million in the transaction and intends to use the proceeds to acquire smaller companies and eventually triple its 80-person headcount. It has not yet set a date for the deal's completion.
Kelly brings more than 30 years of executive experience to the role. He stepped down as CEO of Halo Privacy in November after eight years in the role, according to his LinkedIn profile, and before that served for 16 years as CEO of Chicago-based Heidrick & Struggles, which he helped take public in 1999.
“What attracted me to Cycurion is that they have a great foundation in terms of building and developing a holistic cybersecurity business that can help a broad spectrum of clients, particularly when it comes to commercial businesses,” Kelly said an interview Wednesday. “In addition, the ability to work with Emmit McHenry, one of the pioneers in this industry, and to learn from him was also very appealing.”
McHenry is perhaps best known as creating the .com domain when he ran a company called Network Solutions, which he sold in 1995 to Science Applications International Corp. (NYSE: SAIC) in Reston for a modest $5 million. Network Solutions, which managed the world’s first domain registry and laid the building blocks of the modern internet, would eventually be sold by SAIC in 2000 to Reston-based VeriSign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) for $21 billion.
This time around, McHenry intends to remain intimately involved in the company he founded, even as he steps away from day-to-day duties.
“Staying ahead of technology’s rapidly advancing curve requires intense focus. Running a growing company also requires intense focus and that is now Kevin’s role,” McHenry said. “Kevin sees the world in some ways that I might not see it and vice versa. He has some relationships that I don’t have and vice versa. [We] have very different histories, but we’re both committed to serving market needs and finding inventive ways to provide new solutions and serve our clients.”
