Don Sykes
Practitioner, advisor, and author on the operational discipline that keeps programs, property, and inventory defensible, and on where AI belongs inside that discipline.
The career
Don Sykes has spent seventeen years in government contracting, most of it accountable for equipment, inventory, and Government Property he could not always see. His portfolios have reached the Middle East, the Pacific, and the U.S. Antarctic Program: hundreds of millions of dollars in property and material tracked across time zones and climates, along chains of custody that rarely cooperated. He has worked as a Program Property Manager, as a Senior Program Manager, and as a Deputy Program Manager, usually holding the operational schedule and the compliance record in the same hand.
That combination shaped everything that came after. Don learned property accountability where the stakes were audits, financial exposure, and the quiet erosion of trust that follows a record nobody can defend. He learned program management where a missed milestone had a customer's name attached to it. Somewhere in the overlap sat a mountain of documentation, and a growing suspicion that the professionals carrying it were doing work a machine could help with, if anyone would let it near the data.
The current focus
For the past several years his work has centered on one question: how to put AI tools to work inside property and program functions without breaking the controls that keep those functions honest. That question is the subject of the book, released October 1, 2026, and it is the subject of most of the advisory work.
The advisory practice reflects three tracks the career built: program direction and systems integration; AI adoption inside compliance-sensitive workflows; and property, inventory, and fixed-asset accountability across government, corporate, and nonprofit environments. Each track has its own audiences and its own patterns. All three converge on the same underlying discipline.
Credentials and training
Don has been a member of the National Property Management Association for more than fifteen years. He holds the following certifications:
- CPPM Certified Professional Property Manager, National Property Management Association
- PMP Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute
- CFM Certified Facility Manager, International Facility Management Association
- SSBB Six Sigma Black Belt, Aveta Business Institute
He completed a Post-Graduate Program in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning through Purdue University and Simplilearn.
He holds an MBA from California Coast University, Summa Cum Laude.
Larisa Sykes
Don writes and advises with his wife, Larisa Sykes, a Senior Program Property Manager whose specialty is the examination itself. Her recent work has centered on preparing contractor organizations for DCMA Property Management System Analyses, the reviews that decide whether a company's property system is approved to hold Government Property at all. She is a co-author of the book and an advisory principal alongside Don.
About Larisa →Working with Don
Advisory engagements are inbound only. Remote-first. Selective. If your work touches any of the three tracks named above, the Advisory page covers what a typical engagement looks like and how to reach out.
For notes on the book, endorsements, or press, contact is the right door.
Don lives and works in Clarksville, Tennessee.