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William Teel Jr. led his company, 1 Source Consulting, in landing a $1.2 billion contract to provide information technology and management consulting services to the U.S. Department of Energy a few years ago and has not looked back. He formed another company, continued to land multimillion-dollar contracts and has hired more and more employees.

That success, great as it is has been, is only part of the reason he'll be inducted into the Maryland Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame on Wednesday along with Bill Couper, president of Bank of America's mid-Atlantic region, and June Streckfus, executive director of the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education.

"What captured our attention," chamber President and CEO Kathleen T. Snyder said of Teel, "is how much he is personally giving back to the community in addition to his corporate contributions."

Teel, an Upper Marlboro resident who credits much of his success to his education at Bowie State University, certified his gratitude this week with a personal gift of $1 million to the university, the largest gift in the school's 144-year history.

"Bowie State taught me to become an independent thinker," said Teel, 43, a North Carolina native who grew up in Washington, D.C. "I joined the ROTC program and worked nights in addition to carrying a full academic credit load. Even though I sat out one year because I didn't have enough money to enroll, I continued working and returned the following year."

"We are immensely grateful for William Teel's remarkable $1 million gift, the largest in the history of the university," said Mickey L. Burnim, Bowie State president, in a statement. "The funds will be used as he directs with the largest portion going to provide scholarships for students. Because of his generosity, many students will have the opportunity to study for a college education and excel."

Teel earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Bowie State, and later a master's in business administration from Johns Hopkins University. By contributing to Bowie State's current $15 million fundraising campaign, Teel said he wants to set an example and lead the way for other alumni to give back.

"He's a great example of the kind of business person Maryland has," Snyder said. "While a federal contractor, he's very connected to the community."

On 1 Source's winning the billion-dollar Energy Department contract, Michael Bowlds, CEO of Mountaintop Marketing Group of Silver Spring, which arranges contracting seminars, said, "As the chairperson of the National Capital Area Minority Business Opportunities Center [a Falls Church, Va., organization that assists minority-owned businesses], we were all very happy to see that award. It demonstrates the power of teaming, that when folks come together … they can go after much larger opportunities than typically we think small businesses are capable of doing."

Scott Orbach, president of EZGSA of Bethesda, a company that specializes in helping companies gain federal contracts, said, "I can't think of any time that a minority-owned small business has won such a large contract. The contracts almost always go" to large companies such as General Dynamics, Science Applications International Corp. and Lockheed Martin.

"Among the obstacles that a small business would have to overcome is the need to staff up quickly … and financing a payroll order of a magnitude larger than they ever had," Orbach said.

The Business Gazette talked to Teel on his success in growing his companies, which he says are projected to bring in "anywhere from $250 [million] to $300 million" in revenue this year.

How early did you get interested in IT?

At Bowie State … where I was interested in management information systems. After college I went to work for a federal contractor, then became a federal employee working in IT for the Department of Energy, where I was doing help desk support and fixing PCs. Then I went back and got my master's degree in management information systems.

You worked for the federal government until 1995, then went to T. Rowe Price. Why?

The government was going through RIFs [reductions in force] and one of my professors at Johns Hopkins also worked during the day at T. Rowe Price, so he recommended me for the job, which represented the next step up in my professional career. I had not done financial systems [like the ones he worked with there], and I thought I needed to understand all aspects of it. After a year and a half at T. Rowe Price, I finished up my MBA, worked for a nonprofit company in D.C. for about a year and then started my own company.

When did you know you wanted your own company?

Well, the whole intention for me to go back to Hopkins was for the purpose of starting my own company. Originally it was going to be me and three other friends who worked at T. Rowe Price. We were all going to resign the same day and chip in investment capital and start a business together. I resigned, but the other three did not, and so at that point I took another opportunity, saved up some additional capital and when I had enough capital secured, I started my company.

And it was just me, so that's how I came up with the name of my first company 1 Source Consulting … because I was the network engineer, I was the programmer, I was the accountant, I was the janitor ….

Who was your first big client?

The Department of Energy.

Was that a result of your previous relationships there?

I wouldn't say previous relationships, because when I was a fed, most of the people I knew had either transitioned on, or retired. It was just coming back into an environment that was familiar. Because I had prior knowledge of DOE, I was able to come in and understand mission requirements, IT requirements … and what the MBA did for me was very important.

A lot of time you have communication problems between technical people and business people. The master's in [management information systems] gave me a highly technical background. But being able to offer solutions that don't correlate with business needs is where a lot of companies fail. So the MBA allowed me to take into account the business perspective, what the business needs were.

What did you do on that DOE contract, and how much was it for?

It was working help desk support and doing strategic planning study … correlating to mission requirements for utilization of IT capital dollars. When a program office allocates money they have to have a strategic plan and they have to have performance metrics that tie IT investments to IT projects. My first purchase order contract was $10,000. And then after that I got it extended to $80,000 and then after that I got it extended to $150,000, $200,000.

And you said how you grew very fast, and started hiring employees. Let's jump to the DOE contract for $1.2 billion. How many years was that for?

It's a seven-year, and we are just now starting year four. It's important to note the contract we won with DOE was not an 8(a) contract [Teel was part of the Small Business Administration 8(a) program to assist small businesses]. It wasn't even a small-business contract … it was a full and open contract, so all other companies out there, including Lockheed or Northrop Grumman, could have bid on the contract.

And how did you win it?

[Smiles] It was just strategy…we just had a really good strategy going in that aligned mission requirements as is, and to be, with a highly competitive cost proposal.

And it was low bid?

It was a fair market bid. We don't have the overhead costs of a Lockheed Martin that is paying for layers and layers of management that sit on it … For a smaller business, we can come in and offer costs savings but still deliver on the services and be a highly profitable company.

And how many employees do you have now?

Anywhere between 650 and 700, between here and throughout the country on client sites. And we probably subcontract an equal number of positions as well.

And you are hiring more?

Yes, we probably have openings for about 40 positions now … most of them in software engineering.

William Teel Jr.

Position: CEO of IT companies 1 Source Consulting, with offices in Washington, D.C., and Germantown, and Energy Enterprise Solutions of Germantown. Customers include the U.S. Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Justice, Education and Transportation.

Residence: Upper Marlboro.

Hobbies: "Used to be basketball before I tore my knee up, but I'm an avid fan, all the home teams, big Redskins fan."

Organizations: Maryland Chamber of Commerce

Education: Bachelor's and master's degrees, Bowie State University; MBA, Johns Hopkins.