Kim Caudle Lewis.

Kim Caudle Lewis co-founded ProjectXYZ, a Huntsville, Alabama-based engineering and technology services company serving federal government and defense customers.

Alongside co-founder Larry E. Lewis, Jr., she has built ProjectXYZ into a substantial federal contractor delivering engineering, logistics, and technology services to customers including the U.S. Army, NASA, and defense agencies. She was named the 2025 SBA Alabama Small Business Person of the Year. The Huntsville technology corridor has become one of the most concentrated hubs of American defense and aerospace entrepreneurship, and ProjectXYZ is among the more visible minority-owned and woman-owned federal contractors operating in that ecosystem. Under her co-leadership, the company has scaled through disciplined capture of federal contracts while building the technical capability that allows small businesses to compete for increasingly complex government programs. Regional federal contractors are a category of American business that gets less attention than Silicon Valley software but produces more durable revenue for the entrepreneurs who build them well.