Kimberly Yoder

Kimberly Yoder serves as a key contracting professional within the FA8649 USAF SBIR/STTR Contracting Center, supporting the Department of the Air Force’s mission to accelerate innovation through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. She manages the full lifecycle of competitive acquisitions for early-stage research and development projects, focusing on rapid prototyping and dual-use technology transition. Her work directly enables the Air Force and Space Force to source cutting-edge capabilities from small businesses, ensuring alignment with national defense priorities through agile, non-traditional procurement pathways. She routinely handles Phase I and Phase II SBIR/STTR awards, emphasizing technical merit, commercialization potential, and mission relevance. Yoder collaborates extensively with a dynamic ecosystem of small businesses, including startups, university-affiliated research entities, and emerging technology firms, many of which are first-time federal contractors. Her procurement approach prioritizes non-traditional defense vendors and fosters partnerships with entities possessing novel solutions in physical sciences, engineering, and advanced systems. She cultivates relationships with vendors who demonstrate technical innovation and a clear pathway to operational adoption, often guiding them through federal acquisition regulations and transition planning. Her contracting portfolio reflects a strong commitment to socioeconomic goals, with approximately two-thirds of awards set aside exclusively for small businesses under FAR 19.5. While no specific set-aside categories like 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB are dominant, her consistent use of total small business set-asides underscores a strategic emphasis on broad-based small business inclusion and innovation diversity. Yoder’s acquisitions are exclusively focused on NAICS 541715—Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences—encompassing advanced materials, sensor systems, autonomous platforms, propulsion technologies, and computational modeling. She specializes in procuring foundational R&D services that bridge laboratory innovation with military operational needs, ensuring that funded projects are technically rigorous and aligned with Air Force modernization priorities.