2020 – 2026 · BBAI · CIK 1836981
BigBear.ai Leadership
The May 2020 AE Industrial Partners roll-up that formed the company, the December 2021 NYSE listing via SPAC merger with GigCapital4, the CEO-transition sequence (Brothers → Long → McAleenan), the three-person executive officer roster (CEO Kevin McAleenan, General Counsel Carolyn Blankenship, CFO Sean Ricker), the eight-director classified board with Chairman Peter Cannito, and the single-class voting structure with the AE Industrial-tied removal-supermajority provision. Sourced from the 2026 DEF 14A proxy statement filed April 28, 2026 and the FY2025 10-K.
Sibling pages: BigBear.ai Financials · Roster row: BigBear.ai on /orgs/ · AI pure-plays: /ai/orgs/.
Origin — AE Industrial Partners roll-up, May 2020
Unlike the other AI pure-plays on `/ai/orgs/`, BigBear.ai has no traditional founder team. The company was assembled in May 2020 by AE Industrial Partners, a private-equity firm focused on aerospace, space, defense, and government services, through the consolidation of three predecessor government-services firms. AE Industrial's continued board representation (Pamela Braden, Peter Cannito, Paul Fulchino, Kirk Konert all serve as Operating Partners or Managing Partner at AE Industrial) is the through-line of BigBear.ai's leadership history; the CEO seat itself has rotated three times since formation.
AE Industrial-acquired data-analytics firm whose merger with PCI in 2021 produced the BigBear.ai of today. NuWave's leadership formed the operating-team core in the early SPAC-merger period. Sean Battle's bio cites his joining BigBear.ai in 2021 “upon the merger of NuWave Solutions and PCI.”
Sean Battle (current Class I director) was Co-Founder and CEO of PCI; PCI was a Maryland-based defense and intelligence consulting firm with prime contracts at the National Security Agency and across the broader IC. Per Battle's bio, PCI “won four Prime contracts, expanded to 14 states” under his leadership before joining the AE Industrial roll-up.
The third leg of the May 2020 roll-up. Provided national-security-focused technology services prior to consolidation into BigBear.ai under AE Industrial Partners' ownership.
The three predecessor firms were consolidated into BigBear.ai under AE Industrial Partners' ownership in May 2020. The combined entity went public via SPAC merger with GigCapital4 in December 2021 (NYSE listing date: December 8, 2021). AE Industrial Partners and its affiliates retained a substantial post-listing ownership stake; the proxy's voting-structure language describes a removal-supermajority provision that activates when AE Industrial's voting power falls below 50%.
CEO transition history
BigBear.ai has had three CEOs since the December 2021 NYSE listing. The current officeholder, Kevin McAleenan, has the most distinctive pre-BigBear lineage on the AI pure-play roster — he served as Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump and was the first career civil servant confirmed as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Current executive officers
Three executive officers as of April 13, 2026, per the 2026 DEF 14A proxy statement. Click any row for the bio detail.
Kevin McAleenan
54
Chief Executive Officer; Class II Director (term expires 2026, nominated for term expiring 2029)
2024 (via Pangiam)
CEO since January 15, 2025. Joined BigBear.ai as President via the February 2024 Pangiam acquisition (he was Pangiam's co-founder, CEO, and Chair before the acquisition). At Pangiam, he led biometrics and AI products for security applications, for both government and commercial customers.
Pre-Pangiam: spent almost two decades in U.S. government leadership. Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President Trump (overseeing CBP, TSA, Coast Guard, CISA, Secret Service, and others — over 240,000 employees), and first career civil servant confirmed as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (2018). Recipient of the Presidential Rank Award (the highest civil service award), a Service to America Medal, and multiple travel-and-trade-industry awards.
Carolyn Blankenship
63
General Counsel and Secretary
March 2022
General Counsel and Secretary since March 2022. Previously held a series of intellectual-property-focused legal roles at Reuters and Thomson Reuters from 2001 to 2022 — first as VP, Principal Legal Counsel (IP) from 2001 to 2008; then SVP, Associate General Counsel (IP) from 2008 to 2018; then General Counsel, Innovation & Product from 2018 to 2022. Earlier IP-related positions at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Priceline.com. Visiting Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and Princeton University. B.A. Biology from Harvard College, J.D. from Arizona State University College of Law.
Sean Ricker
38
Chief Financial Officer
April 2021
Permanent CFO since October 14, 2025; interim CFO from June 6, 2025. The longest-tenured of the three current executive officers in the BigBear.ai org chart, having joined as Corporate Controller in April 2021 and served as Chief Accounting Officer from August 2022 through June 2025 before the CFO promotion. Prior to BigBear.ai, Director at MorganFranklin Consulting (now Highspring) from 2019 to 2021. B.S. Accounting from the University of Maryland, College Park; CPA licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Ages, positions, and tenure as listed in the 2026 DEF 14A. The proxy's executive-officer roster has been streamlined to three named officers in the 2026 cycle; earlier proxies named additional officers, several of whom have departed (see Notable departures).
Board of directors — classified, three classes, eight seats
Eight directors as of April 13, 2026, organized into three staggered classes (Class I, II, III) under BigBear.ai's classified-board structure. Five directors are independent under NYSE listing rules (Braden, Fulchino, Hayes, Konert, Evangelista; the 2026 proxy explicitly names Battle as a NomGov independent under the same review). Chairman Peter Cannito presides over executive and independent-director sessions. Several directors (Cannito, Konert, Braden, Fulchino) are concurrent Operating Partners or Managing Partner at AE Industrial Partners, the PE firm that formed BigBear.ai in May 2020.
Kevin McAleenan
54
Class II · Chief Executive Officer, Director (term 2026, nominated for 2029)
2025
Management director (not independent). See the executive-officer row for the operating-role bio. Up for re-election at the 2026 Annual Meeting; if re-elected, term expires 2029.
Pamela Braden
68
Class II · Independent · Member, Audit Committee · (term 2026, nominated for 2029)
2021
Operating Partner at AE Industrial Partners since 2022; over 35 years in defense, technology, and government services. Previously CEO and Founder of Gryphon Technologies, an engineering services firm acquired by AE Industrial Partners in 2018; under her leadership and AE Industrial's guidance, Gryphon grew to over $300 million in revenue with 1,500 engineers and technical personnel over a three-year period, pivoting from privately-held engineering services into digital engineering, cyber assessment tools, cloud data migration, and predictive analytics for national-security organizations. Up for re-election at the 2026 Annual Meeting.
Sean Battle
56
Class I · Director · Member, Compensation & NomGov Committees (term expires 2028)
2021
Co-Founder and former CEO of PCI Strategic Management (one of the three predecessor companies in the May 2020 AE Industrial roll-up). Joined BigBear.ai upon the merger of NuWave and PCI in 2021; served as the company's Chief Strategy Officer from December 2020 to December 2021. Over 30 years in the Intelligence Community and DoD; began career as a Signals Analyst in the U.S. Air Force; later served as a Civilian Executive at the National Security Agency responsible for the End User Computing Portfolio. J.D. from University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Law; B.S. Business Administration from Hawaii Pacific University. Active in AFCEA and the Fort Meade Alliance.
Paul Fulchino
79
Class I · Independent · Chair, NomGov · Member, Audit Committee (term expires 2028)
2021
Operating Partner at AE Industrial Partners since June 2015; Chairman of AEI HorizonX Ventures (2019–2023). Previously Senior Advisor to Boeing (April 2010–December 2014); CEO of Aviall (which became a wholly-owned Boeing subsidiary); President and COO of B/E Aerospace; President and Vice Chairman of Mercer Management Consulting. Brings public-company-director experience from Spirit AeroSystems Holdings (since 2006) and Wesco Aircraft Holdings (2008–2020). B.S. Mathematics from Boston College, M.B.A. from Columbia Business School; attended the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Dorothy D. Hayes
75
Class I · Independent · Chair, Audit · Audit-committee financial expert (term expires 2028)
2021
Joined the board on the December 2021 SPAC merger; previously served on GigCapital4's pre-merger board as Chair of both the Compensation and NomGov Committees. Concurrent director of Redwire Corporation (since October 2025; Audit Committee Chair since March 2026). From 2003 to 2008, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer (later Chief Audit Executive) at Intuit. Earlier: VP / Corporate Controller / CAO of Agilent Technologies (1999–2003); various financial-executive roles at Hewlett Packard (1989–1999); VP, Corporate Controller of Apollo Computer (1980–1989). Maintains the NACD Board Leadership Fellow credential. M.S. Finance from Bentley University, M.S. Business Administration and B.A. Elementary Education from University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Peter Cannito
53
Class III · Chairman of the Board · Member, NomGov Committee (term expires 2027)
2021
Chairman of the Board; presides over executive and independent-director sessions. Concurrently Chairman and CEO of Redwire (a space solutions company) since June 2020 and Operating Partner at AE Industrial Partners (June 2019 to present). Earlier: CEO of Polaris Alpha (2016–2018), a high-tech solutions provider for DoD and the Intelligence Community; CEO and COO at EOIR Technologies; led software / systems engineering teams at Booz Allen Hamilton on critical defense and intelligence programs. B.A. Finance from University of Delaware, M.B.A. from University of Maryland; served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Anthony Evangelista
67
Class III · Independent · New, Aug 2025 · Member, Audit & Compensation Committees (term expires 2027)
August 2025
Newest director (joined August 2025). Audit-committee financial expert. Financial-services partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP from 1996 until retirement in July 2019, with audit and consulting leadership roles in PwC's New York, Hong Kong, London, and Boston offices. From 1993 to 1996, served as Assistant Chief Accountant in the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Chief Accountant. Earlier PwC tenure 1985–1993. Brings deep U.S. GAAP, audit-standard, and SEC-regulatory expertise to the board.
Kirk Konert
39
Class III · Independent · Chair, Compensation · Member, NomGov Committee (term expires 2027)
2021
Managing Partner at AE Industrial Partners (the PE firm that formed BigBear.ai in May 2020). Has led AE Industrial's investments in — and sits on the boards of — multiple AE Industrial portfolio companies, including Firefly Aerospace, ThayerMahan, Redwire, York Space Systems, and RedLattice. Undergraduate degree from Davidson College.
Ages, classes, and committee assignments as listed in the 2026 DEF 14A (page 6 director-information table; page 16 committee-composition table). The 2026 Annual Meeting will re-elect McAleenan and Braden (Class II) to three-year terms expiring in 2029. Independence determinations: NYSE Rule 303A.02 for general independence, Rule 10A-3 for the Audit Committee, Rule 10C-1 for the Compensation Committee.
Voting structure & AE Industrial removal-supermajority
BigBear.ai has a single class of common stock; each share carries one vote. As of the April 13, 2026 record date, there were 478,949,450 shares outstanding. Cumulative voting is not permitted with respect to the election of directors or any other matter at the Annual Meeting.
Classified board. Directors are divided into three classes serving staggered three-year terms. Class I expires 2028; Class II expires 2026 (with the 2026 nominees standing for terms expiring 2029); Class III expires 2027. The classified structure reduces the number of director seats up for election in any given year and is the page's most distinctive corporate-governance feature relative to most AI pure-plays.
AE Industrial-tied removal-supermajority provision. The proxy describes a removal-rights distinction tied to AE Industrial Partners' voting concentration. When AE Industrial Partners and its Permitted Transferees beneficially own less than 50% of voting power, directors may be removed only for cause and only by the affirmative vote of 66 2/3% of the voting power of all then-outstanding shares (voting together as a single class). While AE Industrial Partners and its Permitted Transferees beneficially own 50% or more of voting power, directors may be removed with or without cause by a majority of voting power. As of the latest proxy, AE Industrial's voting power has fallen below the 50% threshold, so the supermajority provision is the operative regime.
Source: 2026 DEF 14A, “Removal of Directors” subsection inside the Corporate Governance section.
Notable departures
The CEO seat has rotated three times since the December 2021 NYSE listing; an interim CFO period in mid-2025 (between the prior CFO's departure and Sean Ricker's October 2025 permanent appointment) is also surfaced. Pre-2023 officers and directors are sparser in the public record because the company was a recently-public SPAC-merger-completion entity.
Sources: 2026 DEF 14A executive-compensation tables (PEO transition footnotes name Long and McAleenan with the January 15, 2025 cut-over date); contemporaneous reporting for Brothers' pre-2023 tenure. Earlier CFO and other officer departures are not catalogued at this level of detail in the public record; new departures, when they happen, will be added here in the same matched-set shape as the Palantir leadership departures table.
Read these primary sources
Most of the page's content is paraphrased from the URLs below. They are the authoritative places to read what BigBear.ai has said in its own SEC filings.
BigBear.ai SEC filings
The 2026 DEF 14A is the canonical source for the current officer + director rosters, the classified-board structure, the AE Industrial-tied removal-supermajority provision, and the executive-compensation transition narrative (Long → McAleenan). The FY2025 10-K supplements with the “Directors and Executive Officers” table.
# 2026 DEF 14A — officers, directors, classified-board structure, voting rights
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1836981/000183698126000028/bbai-20260428.htm
# FY2025 10-K — Item 10 (Directors and Executive Officers) and Item 13
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1836981/000183698126000018/bbai-20251231.htm
# BigBear.ai on EDGAR — full filing history
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001836981
# EDGAR submissions JSON — full filing index for BigBear.ai
https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0001836981.jsonBigBear.ai's own pages
The company's IR site hosts the corporate-governance page (committee charters, governance guidelines).
# BigBear.ai corporate site
https://bigbear.ai/
# Investor Relations — Corporate Governance landing
https://ir.bigbear.ai/corporate-governance
# AE Industrial Partners — the PE firm that formed BigBear.ai in May 2020
https://www.aeroequity.com/Sources: BigBear.ai's own SEC filings — specifically the April 28, 2026 DEF 14A proxy statement for the current officer + director rosters, the classified-board structure, the voting structure, and the CEO-transition history; the FY2025 10-K filed April 15, 2026 for Item 10 (Directors and Executive Officers). Last updated April 2026.
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