Strategic Partners and Advisors

GBS has a wealth of government and industry experts available to assist our clients.  Strategic advisors will work on an as-needed basis with GBS clients.

  Eric Mandell is President and Owner of ECM Consulting, a firm that focuses on helping large and small businesses to secure State, local, and multi-State government contracts.  He brings more than 40 years of proven, positive results and diverse executive level experience in the areas of government and private-sector procurement, external affairs, strategic communications, and marketing to his current work.

Eric retired in February 2018 after 23 years of service and most recently, 5 years as Chief of Acquisitions for the State of California at the California Department of General Services (DGS).  In his capacity as the Chief Contracting Official for the nation’s 8th largest economy, he oversaw all statewide contracts for everything ranging from AAA batteries to Ziploc bags.  These contracts generated over $10 billion in annual state spend, and at least 3 times that much from local governments. They included multi-year agreements in the billions of dollars with private companies for pharmaceuticals, firefighting helicopters, IT hardware , software and consulting services, and Software License Agreements with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and others.  While in this position, Eric also served as Vice-Chair of the multi-state procurement collaborative, NASPO/Valuepoint’s Western Region Board of Directors and was a Member-at-Large of its National Board of Directors. 

Previously, Eric was the Chief of California’s Office of Small and Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise (DVBE) Services, California’s senior official tasked with certifying and assuring that that the State’ s small and DVBE businesses received at least their mandated 25% share of state-awarded contracts.  Under his leadership, the State exceeded its goals 7 of 8 years.  During the same period,  he served as the Acting Deputy Director of the Governor’s Office of Small Business and DVBE Advocate.  Eric and his staff created a streamlined, on-line certification process and an outreach and education program that is now considered the gold standard  for the rest of the nation.

Eric has extensive and highly-successful experience in marketing, communications, advertising, and media.  He has created award winning campaigns for California’s Breast Cancer Awareness, Enterprise Zones, Military Base Reuse, and Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank programs, as well as Sacramento WORKS for Sacramento County.

Eric is a graduate of the University of California, Davis and has done coursework at the London School of Economics, Harvard Business School and graduate work at California State University, Sacramento.  He has worked on air and in management positions in radio and television. He also owned his own small business, ECM Communications, an advertising and public relations agency based in Sacramento, California.