This is part of our series on the inaugural Executive Class Maestro Group Hall of Fame inductees. These 12 individuals have been honored for their dedication to advancing their employees from salespeople to sales professionals, holding their teams accountable, treating sales as a science, and modeling best practices within their organizations.
August 13, 2025
In 1987, the Japanese Prime Minister’s Council for Science of Technology proposed to the scientists of the G7 nations that they work toward a way for international scientists to cooperate on research. This effort eventually became what’s known today as the Human Frontier Science Program, which continues to award research grants to researchers and scientists all over the world. When applicants apply for these grants, they do so on a research-grant management platform called ProposalCentral by Altum. Its CEO, Steve Pinchotti, is this month’s Maestro Executive Hall of Famer.
Here’s how Steve explains it: “I first ask them if they’ve heard of nonprofits like Susan G. Komen or American Heart Association or American Cancer Society. And they typically say yes…Most people are familiar with fundraisers for those charities. Right? There’s a lot of walks. There’s a lot of runs, 5ks, 10ks, raising money for these charities. And they all say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve done a walk. I’ve done those things.’ So, when all that money is raised for those nonprofits, they ultimately give that money out to scientists to cure or study those disease areas typically, and so where we come in is that we’re the software platform that lets them give that money out to those scientists. So, we’re a grants-management portal that lets any research funder in the world post an opportunity and let the scientists come in and write a grant application and apply for those funds.”
If you ask Steve (I did) what he envisioned he’d be doing at this point in his career when he first started out, he’ll tell you: “I never would have thought almost 30 years in, that I would be in this grants management world doing what I’m doing today.”
After graduating college, he became a consultant for American Management Systems (now part of CGI), where he worked on financial-system implementations for the federal government. “That’s where I met my longtime business partner and friend, Ken Fang.”
In 1997, Steve joined the software company Ken had started. “The company was not built to be the next Google, be the next Facebook…” In other words, their venture didn’t have a sole high-concept, well…concept that it limited itself to. Rather, “it was essentially an IT services company, and we were building custom software for anybody and everybody. It was everything from pool maintenance-supply companies to smaller construction companies, to electrical companies, to the federal government.”
They did, however, have an idea of what they wanted the business’s future to look like. “We knew we wanted to get into the software product world, but we weren’t quite sure. And so, we spent a lot of years building software, even if it was for the federal government, in sort of a productized way that we could repurpose for a lot of different customers without having to rebuild it from scratch every time.” They may not have been building a singular concept, but they were building a model for themselves.
One of Steve and Ken’s first engagements was to build software for the National Institutes of Health, “and that’s where we learned about the whole grants-management space…” Most people, in Steve’s experience, are still surprised to learn just how big the research grant world actually is. Its sheer potential still excites him. “The reason that we focus on the research and development space is, that’s where all our innovation comes from in humanity. Right?…I mean, most of our team, they’ve been here ten, fifteen, some 21 years, because I think people—they love being connected to the missions of these organizations…”
Not only did Steve tell me that zeroing in on the research-grant portion of his business was one of the best professional decisions he made; he also said he considers it the thing he’s most proud of. “Everyone is on the same page, and every employee and every contractor and every consultant was aligned with this mission, this vision where we’re headed, and I’m just glad we got here.”
From a business perspective, Steve also focuses on customer service. “There are so many things you can talk about with the business and the operations of it, and the direction. But ultimately, at the end of the day, you’re in business for your customers. You’re there to give them an amazing result, amazing customer service. And that’s, I think, what has stuck with me for all these years, from when Ken built [the company] and we called it Custom Software Service. We talked even back in our AMS days…if you make the employees happy, you make the customers happy.”
Steve spends a not-insignificant amount of time thinking about what he calls succession planning. Though he plans to keep working for some time, he says he does keep in mind “the longevity of the business, where it should go. I’m so passionate about it. I love the customers. I love this ability to be my own boss, and to make the decisions and determine our direction. But I know that that won’t go on forever. So, I think it’s important to think about.”
Since Steve mentioned this was something that others in his cohort should be thinking about, I asked him what steps he’d recommend other leaders take in this realm. He envisions starting a kind of twice-yearly check-in for executives. “How are you feeling? Are you ready to sell? Are you ready to get investment?… Where are you in your family? And what are you thinking?…People’s health. Like you care so much about the clients and the employees and the business. You want everything to just be ready…”
In 2024, the Human Frontier Science Program held their annual grantee meeting in DC, and Steve was thrilled to have the opportunity to go. He was flabbergasted. “The first scientist presented on how they were building these little robotic bees.” Others studied bats’ memories. Others ventured into the ocean. “It’s a really unique organization. It’s very collaborative across the world, and the beauty is, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, they’ve been awarded to numerous Nobel Prize winners over the years…unbelievable success.”
Steve’s fascination with scientific research bleeds into his personal life, as well. He sits on the board of ORCID, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as “a free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.” One reason this is important is that it offers a sort of chain of custody to research innovation. “If I’m an organization,” says Steve, “and I gave you a grant to study something and say the grant was for three years, right? And you’re a researcher at a university, and 20 years later you go on to win the Nobel Prize for some work, it is very hard for that organization to keep that connection with you 20 years later. But when you have the ORCID ID and you have this persistent connection over time, it’s great for these organizations to be able to say, ‘Hey, looks like we helped fund them earlier in their career, and look where they ended up.’ So, it really helps keep the system and the ecosystem connected.”
It’s also immensely rewarding. Independently of ORCID, every once in a while, someone might create a new type of treatment or experimental drug—Steve gave the example of an Alzheimer’s research drug—“and we all internally realize, like, ‘Oh, my goodness! That was a scientist that was funded through our platform…’” Software leading to global connectivity leading to unimaginable progress: Steve Pinchotti’s kind of over the moon to be a part of it.
You can learn more about Steve here. Be sure to congratulate him while you’re there!
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