Recorded live at VETS 26 in New Orleans, this episode features Tiphanie Forst, Founder & CEO of Frigata Health Strategies and a Principal at Deep Water Point. With 24 years across clinical, pharmaceutical, and healthcare IT — the past 20 focused on Military Health System modernization for the DoD and VA — Tiphanie has built a career on growth strategy, business development, and capture, helping drive multi-hundred-million- to multi-billion-dollar wins. At Frigata, she provides business development, sales capture, and proposal support, acting as the connector and "face of the company" for clients who can't be everywhere themselves: linking small and service-disabled-veteran-owned businesses to the government leaders, contracts, and teaming partners they need to win, and helping large primes get strategic by teaming smart rather than muscling in alone (she describes structuring a joint venture that landed a client among six awardees on a DHA contract).

The through-line is connection across worlds that don't obviously overlap — veterans, professional athletes, investors, and health tech. The daughter of a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Tiphanie is deeply committed to the veteran and military-health space, and she draws a striking parallel between retiring athletes and transitioning veterans: both face a loss of identity and a need for new resources and support, especially around mental health. She's channeling that vision into a new venture, IconIQ, organized around growth, access, innovation, nexus, and a lifestyle/brand "studio" component — fitting for someone who's also a professional artist creating bold acrylic work under TWA – Art by Tiphanie Forst. It's a fast, energetic conversation about relationships as the real currency of federal business development.

In This Episode:

• 00:06 - Introduction to Aqua Talks
• 03:45 - Connecting Veterans with Business Opportunities
• 07:05 - Connecting Veterans to Opportunities in Business
• 09:49 - Connecting Small Businesses and Veterans in Federal Procurement
• 10:28 - Connecting Athletes and Media Innovation

Key Takeaways:

• Two decades in military health modernization. Tiphanie brings 24 years across clinical, pharmaceutical, and healthcare IT — 20 of them on Military Health System modernization for the DoD and VA — behind multi-hundred-million- to multi-billion-dollar wins.
• Business development and capture, done through relationships. Frigata Health Strategies offers business development, sales capture, and proposal support, with Tiphanie serving as the "face" for clients at conferences and in the community — valuable for firms without in-house BD resources.
• Strategic teaming beats brute force. She structured a joint venture that positioned a lesser-known large business as a prime and landed it among six awardees on a DHA geographic-service-provider contract — sometimes the smart play is teaming with a strategic small business.
• Helping small and SDVOSB firms break in. From SAM registration to GSA schedules to knowing which contracts and people to target, she helps businesses new to federal procurement find direction and get onto winning teams.
• The athlete–veteran parallel. Tiphanie connects professional athletes and transitioning veterans around a shared loss of identity and mental-health challenges — and channels athletes into federal/tech ventures and philanthropic efforts.
• Deep health-IT roots. Her background includes EHR modernization work with firms like Leidos and Cerner (acquired by Oracle), including efforts toward a single longitudinal health record spanning the DHA and VA — "birth to grave."
• A new venture, IconIQ. Her evolving brand organizes her work around growth, access, innovation, nexus, and a lifestyle/brand "studio" — "iconic connections for intelligent outcomes."
• It's all connection. Her recurring theme: missions, investors, athletes, and veterans "all tie together," and relationships are what actually move federal deals forward.

Welcome to Aqua Talks where marketing meets bold game changing ideas.

Join your hosts Larry Aldrich and Maddie Dudley as they explore the art and science of cutting through the noise, capturing attention and fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Whether you're a destination marketer, government contractor or simply passionate about the transformative power of marketing, Aquatox offers engaging discussions, fresh insights and actionable strategies designed to inspire and inform.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of Aqua Talks sponsored by Brennsys Technology LLC and Xeniq. We're here live at vets 26.

We're going to be doing some episodes with veterans, veteran owned businesses and the federal government all working to do outreach to the veteran and all veteran focused here at this conference.

We're going to be talking to some really exciting companies and some consultants who are doing some great things in the federal government and for the veterans. Stay tuned. We got a lot of information coming up. We're going to be speaking with a lot of great people. Thanks for joining episode of Aqua Talks.

We're again live here at vets 26. Today I'm joined with Tiffany Forst. Tiffany, tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do, what you have going on.

Tell us about your company, your background.

I run a company for gotta health Strategies and really we provide business development, consulting, sales, capture, proposal support. Really helping companies grow in whatever space. Mostly focused in the military, health, defense, health, IT modernization.

So you're here at vets 26. How's it come from?

It's amazing. I love it. So many great people. It's always inspiring to talk to some of these CEOs and these service disabled, better known small businesses.

I just was speaking to Lawrence Miller.

He did track for Vets where he walked over 500 miles in the state of Michigan building a campaign and he was a former special ops officer and he's really trying to help in the mental health space for our veterans.

And he's talked to every single police department, service provider, community provider of how to provide real time mental health support for those who are struggling in the moment.

I mean so there's so many great programs out there and where I can come into play is helping connect the different companies together, the different missions to government leaders, to community leaders, to industry leaders. You know, he's looking for more investments, he's looking to ways to expand his business. So that's how I can help.

I know the investors I know now with M and A, athletes, veterans, different parts of the community, they all tie together. We were also talking about him being A former NHL player, big time hockey league. I do a lot with the NFL, so I do a lot of philanthropic events.

And what we were discussing, there's so many ties between professional athletes and veterans, total loss of identity and how do you find those resources and support when you have mental health issues? So that's part of what I'm doing now. I'm evolving for Gotta Health strategies into a company iconic.

So icon IQ and really it's about connecting across growth, access, innovation, nexus and studio.

So it's iconic gains, so it's really iconic connections for intelligent outcomes and it's connecting health care, the innovation of technology, the nexus of capital and M and A. Then you have the studio part is really the lifestyle, the brand experiences.

So across all of those areas they all just tie together in different ways. So he needs investors. Got investors. You want to do athletic events or get the athletes involved in some of these projects?

We'll bring the athletes to you.

That's pretty good. So you, you, you found a connection between athletes and veterans.

You, you have a lot of good connections with a lot of athletes, especially in the D.C. area. You've, there's a lot that come through there and, and, and that's a good connection.

Have you worked with veterans much or do you continue to want to continue to work with veterans?

Well, my dad's a veteran, so he's retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and so it's been passionate for me to stay in the military health space and work with our veterans and I do a lot with our clients. I have several clients in the veteran space, whether it's more community care, mental health support, data analytics, predictive modeling.

So a lot is for the, the veterans and a lot is military health readiness.

So there's also ties too to some of the technology and predicting outcomes of behavior health status, but that can help lead to who's medically ready and fit to be out in the warfield.

So yeah, so I see you on quite a few different conferences. You definitely stay connected to the veteran connected to federal procurement. What was the last conference you were at?

I believe last we spoke you were going to a larger conference because the last we spoke actually was when at vets 24, is that right? Yes.

That's crazy. So I was just at the military health conference and that was in Dallas, Texas last week. And so that's great.

So that's really focused on military health readiness.

And so I've been involved working at other companies like Leidos and Cerner, which was acquired by Oracle, doing EHR modernization and so that was for defense health and then for the veterans worked on that same EHR modernization program and having a single longitudinal health record across the DHA to the va. So birth to grave essentially. So I was involved in those programs.

And so you got that focus of military health readiness and now this focus of the veteran care, whether that's through it or mental health, different areas.

So, so what I heard you, you help a lot of different types of companies. You mentioned being able to do proposal management, capture. You also mentioned Leidos and a few other large.

So if I wanted to break that down a little bit, if you were working with a small, whether it's a veteran owned company, whether it's a woman owned company, whatever the set aside might may be, you can work with a lot of organizations and for small organizations that don't have a lot of in house resources, I'm hearing you can help them with capture because you have lots of connections.

Right.

You can help them grow their business, you can help them prepare for growth with their business. And you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Sure. I mean a perfect example, Officer Dr. Mark Milat, he was in uniform when I worked those deals, when I was at Leidos, when I was at Cerner.

And now he's a retired veteran. He started his service disabled veteran owned small business as Malat and Associates.

And so now as he's changing out of uniform and then coming into industry, it's a different world, it's different connections. There's now a different, you know, red taping bureaucracy.

So how can he connect into the community and get on these deals and really start to expand his business so I can come into play and help connect the dots for him, tell him what programs are out there, what contracts are out there, what people he should be talking to, where he can focus. And so I can really help position companies to be on a winning team or to build a winning team. And that's really what I can help do.

So it's all about growth.

Yeah. And connections. And not only do you have connections, you have a great personality. I've seen you in action, I've seen you work in the room.

So if there's companies out there that can't attend these events and you as a consultant, you can work with them to attend the events, create a strategy that, where you can go to an event and represent that company, is that something you would do?

That's exactly what I do. So I'm the face of the company. So I'm talking, you know, Lawrence Mueller, I'M telling him about Unitus and what they're doing in the community.

Who's one of my clients.

I'm talking about Blue Cloud X who's a company I'm working with right now who are supporting the veterans doing companion care with Nick Lowry, who's Kansas City Chiefs hall of Famer and Robert Gordon at dss. So I can help connect those bits and pieces and wear the badge of those companies. But as Tiffany as for Gada, as.

Iconic, you know and for the larger companies you can do the same thing for a larger company who use a lot of consultants. You can be a consultant for Leidos, for Northrop Grumman and go to events or connect the dots where they need because you have those connections.

Yeah, you can be strategic too. So one of my first clients right out of the gate was a large business. They wanted to get into the GSP contract.

So geographic geographical service providers where there's going to be six awardees. So they weren't as well known in the DHA space. But they knew I had the connection. So I came in and we got creative.

We created a joint venture and we were able to position them as a prime with the key partners that were important to match that scope of work for that program. They became one of the original six sorties. So that's really what I can help do for some of the big companies too. You have to be creative.

Sometimes it's not best to go as the largest. Maybe it's better to team with a strategic small and better position and connect with the government that way.

You're well versed from what I can hear. So there's a lot of small businesses out there that want to get into federal procurement that have a great business model.

They're already doing business. They want to sell to the federal government and don't know what to do.

Literally I've had businesses call me and ask me to help them with their SAM registration or how do you start to talk about getting on a GSA schedule? I don't know nothing about it. Can you help me with direction? That sounds like something you can be perfect for also.

And there's a lot of small businesses out there that can use your services.

Just get started and think about. We're talking about small businesses now. Think about these athletes who are retired, right.

And now they want to get into our world, whether it's the IT infrastructure, the technology piece so we can help them position on teams, kind of force them into building their own business in that way. And we're actually Doing that right now for the. The Commander's Guild for the IT infrastructure.

I'm working with my partner in industry, Raul Verado, also a veteran, started his own sdosb and he's a rock star. So him connecting to me and me connecting to our athletes, building a team, it's pretty cool stuff. But yeah, forget the questions.

No, you answered it well.

What you're doing is you're working with a lot of small businesses and athletes that want to get into our space, which could be the IT space, the professional services space, the video production space. I mean, there's a lot of athletes that are creating their own media farms.

Well, and think about the athletes on the field with the mics that are pretty cool and you're hearing what they're saying on the field. So we have companies in the space to. To connect. So that's not health.

Yeah.

But it ties back to the iconic piece of connecting the right people in the right space with right think about innovation nexus. So those are those two components of the gains of iconic.

Yeah, we thanks for joining us here. We definitely got to have you on again. And you know, we'll. The next time we have so backstory.

I saw a friend from Virginia walk by in New Orleans at a conference and I said, hey, great to see you again. Come be on our podcast. So it kind of worked like that and we definitely got to have you on again.

That's what it is. It's all connection, what it is. Exactly right.

So we definitely have to have you on again with a little bit of leeway so you can come up with some things that you might want to get out and say ahead of time. So I give you. It's almost like I just. It's almost like I just showed up your house and knocked on the door.

One day and I said, let's go.

Exactly.

So that's what we do.

Thanks for joining. Thanks for being.

It was a pleasure seeing you again. You too.

You've been listening to Aqua Talks, where marketing innovation takes center stage with bold ideas and actionable insights. Ready to take your strategies to the next level.

Visit aquataks.com to book your free consultation and explore resources that empower you to thrive in today's fast paced marketing world. Until next time, stay bold, stay inspired, stay imaginative.