Taxpayer Philanthropy: Nonprofit paid CEO millions, employed relatives
(The Center Square)—A federally funded science and technology nonprofit paid its departing CEO nearly $6 million in 2024 and has employed four members of his immediate family, an investigation by The Center Square found.
Mitre Corp., based in Bedford, Mass., gave President and CEO Jason Providakes a $2.4 million bonus in addition to his salary of $931,000 and $2.6 million in other reportable compensation in 2024, according to the company’s latest available federal tax filing.
Providakes’ brother James, a technical director, received $356,000. His son, Eric, a lead engineer, earned $143,000. As recently as 2012, Mitre also employed his wife, April Williams Providakes, and another brother, George, as well as his brother James, federal records show.Last year, Mitre received $2.2 billion in federal taxpayer dollars, reporting similar amounts in taxpayer funding in 2023 and 2024. Among its federal sponsors are the departments of War, State, Commerce, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at The American Enterprise Institute, said members of Congress lack incentive to oversee federal spending and Congress itself has spent too much.“Congressional committees with jurisdiction over the agencies that issue contracts can and should give a close look at companies receiving large contracts,” he told The Center Square. “Unfortunately, they often do not bother to do that work. It is time intensive and unless a scandal is revealed, no legislator will get any credit from voters for their efforts.”Kosar added, “And there’s a bigger problem: Congress has grown the federal government immensely, but it has not adequately expanded its capacity to oversee it all. Committees tend to have too few staff to cover their wide jurisdictions. So committees will pay attention to a handful of federal programs and policies but pay little mind to the rest until a whistleblower, media person, or other individual airs concerns.”
Jordan Graham, a Mitre spokesman, declined a request for an interview. In a statement, he defended the pay for the not-for-profit’s departing CEO and described its conflict-of-interest policies.”The compensation reported for a former chief executive reflects multiple years of performance-based compensation, along with earned separation payments and benefits payouts,” Graham wrote. “The Mitre Board of Trustees, through its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee and supported by independent compensation consultants, maintains rigorous oversight of executive compensation.”The press offices at the departments of War, Homeland Security, State, Commerce, and Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mitre operates six of the federal government’s more than 40 federally funded research and development centers, public-private partnerships that conduct research, analysis, and systems engineering for the federal government. Its center in Bedford, Mass., has a 620,000-gallon indoor tank to test unmanned submarines.In 2012, Fast Company called Mitre “the most important company you’ve never heard of.” This fall, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, co-director of Project Meridian, a Pentagon study commissioned by Mitre to examine the future of weapon systems, visited Mitre’s office in McLean, Va.Rising pay and moreJason Providakes began working at Mitre in 1989 after having earned a doctorate at Cornell University, according to his LinkedIn page; his company said he started in 1991. He was a senior vice president at Mitre and was named president and CEO in 2017. His total compensation rose from $985,000 in 2018 to $3 million in 2023 and $5.9 million the following year, his last at the company.Providakes’s total compensation was several times larger than that of his peers at nonprofits that operated federally funded research and development centers.Norton Schwartz, the CEO of the Institute for Defense Analyses, was paid $834,000 in 2024 and $864,000 the following year. Jason Matheny, president and CEO of the Rand Corp., received $1 million in both 2024 and 2025. Steve Isakowitz, the CEO of the Aerospace Corporation, was paid $2 million in 2024 and $1.9 million last year.Along with Providakes, six other Mitre executives’ compensation exceeded $1 million. Kathleen P. Federico, a senior vice president and chief people officer, was paid $1.6 million before she left in August, and Cedric Sims, senior vice president of enterprise innovation and integration, was paid $1.6 million.MITRE’s tax filings show that the number of employees identified as family members of trustees or other employees rose from one in 2017 to six in 2023 and seven in 2024.The seven family members of Mitre employees and trustees in 2024 were the following:
Michal Cenkl, whose wife also works at Mitre, made $332,000. According to his LinkedIn page, he is the director of innovation and experimentation. He has worked at Mitre since 1989 after he earned a degree in computer science from Rutgers and math and physics from Northeastern. His titles at Mitre have included director of enterprise architecture and innovation.
Kelcey F. Crawford, daughter of a Mitre employee, made $187,000. According to her bio on her LinkedIn page, she is a program manager at the Mitre Corp. Crawford began work in 2018 after graduating with a bachelor of science in mathematics from Elmira College in New York.
Eric Providakes, son of former CEO Jason Providakes, is lead systems engineer at Mitre. He was a supply corps officer in the U.S. Navy from 2014 to 2022 and a supervisor for distribution and logistics at Iron Bow Technologies from 2018 to 2020.James Providakes, Jason’s brother and technical director, earned a Ph.D. from Cornell in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering in 1990. His LinkedIn page does not say when he started work at Mitre.Jessica Richardson, daughter of a Mitre employee, made $100,000. According to her bio on her LinkedIn page, she has been a project manager at Mitre since 2022. Previously, she worked at document management firm ImageX Inc., where, among other jobs, she was a senior project coordinator.
Julien Thiesfield, son of Mitre trustee Yvette Melendez, founder of YMR Consulting, made $146,000. According to his LinkedIn page, he was principal project manager at the Mitre Corp. until July 2025. He had been a manager at real estate company We Work and a senior associate at Gartner, a research and advisory firm. Robert Paul Inglis, son of Mitre trustee John Chris Inglis, former deputy director of the National Security Agency, made $170,000. He has been a systems engineer since 2023. For the previous two years, he was a full-time system-engineering consultant for Ventus, a company that provides engineering and technical services to government and commercial clients.
Eric and James Providakes, Crawford, and Inglis did not respond to voicemails and emails. Cenkl did not respond to a request on LinkedIn for an interview. The Center Square was unable to contact Thiesfield and Richardson using the phone numbers and email addresses available to the publication.Laurie Styron, CEO and executive director of Charity Watch, a nonprofit, said the employment of relatives of nonprofit leaders raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest and preferential treatment.“These relationships create obvious opportunities for conflicts of interest and preferential treatment,” she told The Center Square. “Even when the arrangements are technically permissible, they undermine confidence in an organization’s governance if there is a lack of transparency about how hiring and compensation decisions are made.”Graham said the company has policies about the hiring of relatives.”Mitre maintains robust conflict of interest policies and protocols that apply to all employees regardless of position or personal relationships,” he wrote. “These safeguards are designed to identify, prevent, and manage potential conflicts of interest, protect the integrity of employment decisions, and ensure our work remains free from undue influence or bias.”Less than a year after Providakes stepped down in August 2024, Mitre announced it planned to lay off 442 employees, 5% of its workforce of 9,400.The new CEO, Michael T. Peters, said the layoffs were primarily due to the Department of Government Efficiency, an organization within the Executive Branch that directed federal agencies to cut, change, or cancel thousands of federal contracts. Some cuts were the result of Mitre’s conclusion that the work would go away or be reduced, Peters said.
Styron said Congress should require taxpayer-funded nonprofits to disclose more information. The 990 forms they are obligated to fill out, she said, especially Schedule F, are limited.”It does not offer a complete accounting of individual expenditures, subcontracting arrangements, or the ultimate recipients of funds,” she said. “Schedule F generally reports expenditures by broad geographic region rather than providing a detailed accounting of individual transactions, foreign contractors, or ultimate recipients of funds. For an organization engaged in international research or technical activities, this tax return provides little insight into precisely where a lot of money is going or how it is being used.”
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