In this episode of Beyond Strategy, we sit down with Erik Wittreich, CEO of Ridgeline International, a cutting-edge software and technology firm at the forefront of digital privacy and surveillance protection. A proud portfolio company of Enlightenment Capital, Ridgeline has become a key player in the national security technology space—supporting U.S. government agencies and private sector clients with secure infrastructure, digital signature management, and managed attribution solutions.

Based in Tysons, Virginia, Ridgeline is not just a tech company—it’s a mission-driven partner helping clients counter the growing threats of ubiquitous technical surveillance and global data exploitation. Erik shares how Ridgeline’s proprietary software and elite tradecraft empower customers to operate securely in an increasingly exposed digital world.

In this conversation, Erik walks us through Ridgeline’s strategic growth journey, including its 2025 acquisition of System High Corporation, another Enlightenment Capital portfolio company. The deal brought together two leaders in national security—merging Ridgeline’s digital protection capabilities with System High’s deep experience in protection and security engineering services.

With a background as an Army Green Beret, Erik brings a unique blend of military discipline and corporate vision to his role as CEO. He reflects on:

• His leadership evolution in high-pressure environments
• What it takes to build and scale mission-critical teams
• The strategy behind the Ridgeline + System High integration
• And the challenges and opportunities ahead in the world of digital defense and national security

Whether you're an investor, entrepreneur, national security professional, or simply curious about where technology meets mission, this episode delivers insight, inspiration, and a look into what it means to lead at the edge of innovation.

Tune in now to hear Erik Wittreich’s powerful perspective on leading Ridgeline International into its next era.

Hi, hello, and welcome to Beyond Strategy, an ACG National Capital Region podcast focused on the leaders that drive innovation, enhance understanding, and achieve market clearing outcomes in the National Capital Region. I am Andy McEnroe.

And I am Jenn Wappaus.

Today, we sit down with Eric Wittrich, CEO of Ridgeline International, an enlightenment capital portfolio company. Ridgeline is a high-end software and technology company based in Tyson, Virginia, that specializes in data privacy, secure infrastructure, and digital signature management to help clients, primarily in the US government, and select private sector organizations, mitigate digital surveillance threats and protect against ubiquitous technical surveillance as well as ubiquitous data collection. The firm provides a suite of proprietary software tools, coupled with industry-leading tradecraft to address this rapidly growing issue as a result of the ever-increasing swaths of data produced. Enlightenment Capital invested in Ridgeline International in December 2023 And in March of this year, 2025, Ridgeline acquired fellow Enlightment Capital Portfolio Company, System High, a leading provider of global protection and security engineering services. This strategic purchase combined Ridgeline's advanced digital security and managed attribution solutions with System High's expertise in comprehensive protection and strategic advisory services.

Eric Wittrich has been a part of Ridgeline's leadership team for nearly 10 years and ascended to the CEO approximately seven years ago. He spent nearly the entirety of his career around the national security apparatus. He was an army green beret and supported a couple of other government contractors prior to joining Ridgeline. He has a track record of developing complex strategies, executing long-term innovation plans, analyzing international trends, and managing high-profile client relationships. Eric maintains a reputation for building and growing cross-culture teams that thrive during high-pressure situations in both military and corporate settings.

In my conversation with Eric, we'll hear about his leadership style, the growth and establishment of Ridgeline, what the investment with Enlightenment Capital provides the company, as well as discuss a little bit his fandom of Philadelphia sports teams. Now, here is my discussion with Eric Wittrich, CEO of Ridgeline International. I'm excited to be joined today on Beyond Strategy by Eric Wittrich, CEO of Ridgeline International. Eric, thank you for being here.

Andy, I appreciate you having me on your podcast today. From what I understand, participating in this gets me invited to the Masters next spring. Now, what I wasn't sure, is that an invitation to play or just an invitation to be a spectator?

I'll ask the sponsors around the area that ultimately house those tickets. But here's what I can promise you, I will go to the local thrift store and find you that green jacket that you so deserve for your play. But look, before we dive into what you're building and continuing to build here at Ridgeline, I'd like to start this interview with a leadership-oriented question. What's the most important leadership principle that has guided you and your partners through the creation of Ridgeline, the receipt of the investment from Enlightenment Capital, and your vision for where the business can go from here?

I think there's a lot of wonderful fundamental leadership principles that one could choose from in being a good sport and answering your question as I think about empathy, communications, creativity, of course, quality in what you're delivering to your client, passion. All those are important, but I'll focus in on what I'll say is the number one most important leadership principle, and that is trust. You need to have trust with your executive team. You need it to resonate throughout the workforce, to have it with each employee. Of course, it is imperative to have a trust-based relationship with each of your clients. You need it with your service providers. Ultimately, you need it with the entire ecosystem. Now you bring in, roughly 18 months ago, Enlightenment Capital. Private equity sponsor into our organization. We have to, once again, build that confidence that they have in our execution strategy. That's something that takes time. We spend, I feel a great bit of time in educating them on the business. They are a very smart team, and they've clearly demonstrated a desire to fundamentally understand the inner workings and happenings of the organization. They do a wonderful job at listening, and I think that creates a great component of trust.

Moving forward, you're going to see us rely on enhanced relationships, larger relationships in our ecosystem, the external relationships. It'll be important for the company to ensure that we have trust in all of those external relationships that we can really pour additional fuel on the fire of our growth.

Outside of time, how do you develop that level of trust, whether it's with enlightenment Capital or these third-party relationships that you just mentioned?

A simple one is to communicate a goal and then show that you're able to follow through, to achieve it. It doesn't have to be anything seismic. It's just about chipping away or showing dependency, showing predictability. There's a number of attributes then that go into helping us formulate that trust-based relationship.

Now, that's outstanding, and I think that'll be the foundation for a lot of our conversation here today. But before we go further into Ridgeline and your leadership principles and your background as well, we're in an interesting time here globally, but also in the US, when we think about the current state of the threats that we and our allies are facing, when you think of peer and near-peer threats as opposed to counterterrorism threats from maybe the generation before. As someone who spent the majority of his life around national security, what are those key threats that you're focused on? And how, if you were, call it the threat Tsar, how would you think about addressing them?

There's a number of threats, but I'm going to dig in to the one that I think is most applicable to Ridgeline's story. Andy, you ever hear the saying, it goes back several years now, that data is the new oil?

I think I've vaguely heard that before.

The intent is there there, but it actually couldn't really be farther from the truth. Oil is finite. It's consumable. Of course, it has great value. Other than the forever chemicals, as soon as we consume it, that portion of oil is gone, and that is the antithesis of data. Data is just as valuable as oil was decades ago. The thing with data, it exists forever. We have it in perpetuity technology, and we might not even realize today how valuable some set of data could be tomorrow. That's the big problem that we go up against. Have you ever heard me talk about the data storage cost and version of 2010?

Maybe in a past presentation, but it doesn't ring a bell right here.

Well, in essence, up until that time, large data aggregators such as Google, Data Minor, Palantir, you name it, tens of thousands of organizations, they would employ teams of people to sift through all the data that they were collecting, ultimately trying to answer the question, is this compelling and does this have value or not? In 2010, data storage cost inversion, more as law, it became cheaper to retain all data than it did to make decisions about what to retain. That is really the beginning of the problem from perspective of the US government, because this data is being collected by our adversaries. It's then being used to understand our military objectives, any of the orientation and goals of the US government, its people, you name it. This data has exquisite value, much more so than oil.

Let's continue now on the conversation, Eric, with that backdrop set and talk about the origin story. For listeners that don't know you and Ridgeline, can you provide a brief background on how you became the CEO of this company and really also how the company came into existence?

The company actually celebrated its 10th birthday a couple of weeks ago. Happy birthday. Thank you. We had a wonderful celebration here in Tyson's corner. I joined Ridgeline as employee number 10. I was an individual contributor and asked to help kick its engagement with its second client, with its second customer, who I had a previous work experience with. Over the coming months and quarters, I realized that the team was very focused on client delivery, which is, of course, very important, especially early on in a company's journey. No one was solely focused on the health of the organization. As you start to scale an enterprise, HR becomes.