40 years of DAI

Betsy Marcotte
came to DAI with an
inherent ability to
shake things up, if
necessary.
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When she became Vice President
of DAI’s Agriculture and Natural Resources
Group in 2005, Betsy Marcotte was an experienced
professional. She had been working
at ICF during that firm’s aborted 1991 merger
discussions with DAI and managed water and
environmental projects for another USAID contractor.
Marcotte had long been impressed with
DAI, which she saw as more “mission-driven”
than its competitors. But once on board, she
realized that with little cross-fertilization occurring
between its four practice areas, staff in
her group viewed the overall company mission
from widely different perspectives. A few weeks
into her tenure, she scheduled a retreat to bring
the group’s 50-some staff together. Certain
that she would be considered an “outsider,”
she approached the event with some trepidation.
She soon found, however, that personal
Photo by Joanne Kent, DAI
relationships among the staff were not as strong
as she’d expected. As a result of growth and
turnover, she recalled, “all of us were outsiders
to some degree.”
By many measures, DAI was then at the top
of its game. Having won $410 million in new
contract awards in the preceding year, it was
on the road to becoming one of USAID’s largest
implementing partners. But some important
internal questions were looming: the company’s
long-term ownership structure and its future
leadership had not been settled. And despite
measures to lower them, internal walls between
business units and support offices were only
getting higher. For DAI, staying on top would
require tying up these threads of uncertainty
and pulling employees together at every level.
Fortunately, Betsy Marcotte was just one among
many leaders committed to making this happen.
Ownership Dynamics
and Culture
From its inception, DAI’s bylaws expressed the
founders’ conviction that the company should
remain independent and that shareholding
should be limited to current employees. By
2005, the ownership circle had grown to the
point that there were 70 individual shareholders,
holding 33 percent of the equity, while the ESOP
(the successor to the old profit sharing plan)
held the remaining two-thirds. The advantage of
the ESOP was that it gave all U.S. employees
a chance to participate in ownership. Shares