CALHOUN INTERNATIONAL
Due Diligence
"We've been profitable from the get-go."
— Roger Swinford
[Photo: Mark Wemple]
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Calhoun International, a military contractor with 2009 revenue of $2.5 million, started in the spare bedroom of founder Roger Swinford's Tampa home. Swinford retired from his job as an "all-source" intelligence technician at Central Command in Tampa with the rank of chief warrant officer 4 one week before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2005, he founded his information technology and consulting company, Calhoun International, naming it after the county from which the sixth-generation Floridian's family comes. The firm specializes in intelligence and does the military equivalent of due diligence research, intelligence analysis and cyberspace analytical support for decision makers.
As a contractor, Swinford, 50, has been to Iraq four times and Afghanistan once. He co-owns the company with his wife, Amy, 39, who retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Special Operations Command in Tampa. As with Celestan's company, nearly all employees are former military. "We've been profitable from the get-go," Swinford says.
