About Us

Zachary Christensen joined the NASPO Cooperative Contracting team this year. Zac started his career in procurement at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company after law school. While he practiced contract law for a few years, he considers himself a recovering attorney with a passion for public procurement.

After working in the State of Utah central procurement office as a contract analyst, he led the Utah State Board of Education’s procurement team as the director implementing the procurement module of the entity ERP system, drafting policies, procedures, and forms as a newly created public procurement entity.

Zac then served as the chief procurement officer for the University of Utah in addition to leading the accounts payables, travel, and general stores departments. During this time, Zac led the reimplementation of the travel management system, updated the accounts payables processes, and expanded the university’s use of cooperative contracts.

Zac has earned his CPPO, CPPB certifications from the UPPCC, and the NIGP-CPP certification from NIGP. He has demonstrated his passion for public procurement by serving on the board of examiners for the UPPCC, serving as the Utah Chapter of NIGP’s Vice President, President, and liaison, has served in the NIGP national Member’s Council, Chair of the Utah Education Procurement Advisory Council, has written four NIGP procurement courses, was a highly rated instructor, and presenter at webinars and national events. He has additionally published an article on protests in public procurement in the Utah Bar Journal.

Prior to joining NASPO, Chad obtained his degree in Communications at Utah Valley University. He spent time in various supply chain / warehousing jobs that slowly evolved over the years to procurement centered work.

He spent the last 9 years in various roles in procurement at Utah Transit Authority, most recently as a procurement & contracts specialist. Chad lives in Spanish Fork, Utah with his wife of almost 12 years and his two daughters ages 8 and 4.

He is fluent in all sports talk except soccer. He loves fitness and jump rope, he is a part time jump rope trainer for Crossrope, a weighted jump rope company.

Josh Descoteaux, CPPB, is a Cooperative Portfolio Manager (CPM) for RFxPremier where he directs the establishment and award of national cooperative contracts for use by public entities. Josh previously served as a NASPO ValuePoint CPM, where he worked with Lead States to establish cooperative contracts. Prior to his time with ValuePoint, Josh was a Procurement Content Manager on NASPO’s Professional Development team. Prior to his tenure with NASPO, Josh got his start in state procurement with the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, Division of Purchase and Property where he managed IT procurements. Josh is based in Lexington, KY, he loves being an uncle, hiking, and golf.

Jared Ambrosier is an accomplished procurement professional with over 14 years of contracting experience, eight in leadership roles with the State of Michigan including three as the Chief Procurement Officer.  Overseeing 2.5B of annual spend, Jared has led procurement efforts in critical situations such as the Flint Water Crisis, the insourcing of prisoner food services, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Benton Harbor line replacement project.  Sitting on multiple boards and academic councils Jared has a passion for advancing procurement throughout the State of Michigan for both public and private sector organizations.

Travis Ball currently serves as Executive Director, Business Services & CPO at Texas A&M University-Commerce.  He oversees Procurement, Auxiliary Services, Logistics, Transportation Services, and Real Estate.  In addition to his primary role, he is also an adjunct instructor for the College of Innovation and Design.  Travis holds a Bachelors of Business Administration in Management from Texas A&M University-Commerce and a Master of Science in Management also from Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Travis is also a Past President of the National Board of Directors for the National Association of Educational Procurement (NAEP).

Bob currently serves as Director of Procurement for the Broward County Government, where he leads and administers the central procurement system. Before joining the County, he was the State of Maryland’s first Chief Procurement Officer, appointed by Governor Larry Hogan to reorganize and modernize Maryland’s procurement system. Before that he was Director of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s central procurement office and directed their enterprise “eVA” eProcurement program and with the CIO for the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (“VITA”).

He is a nationally Certified Public Purchasing Officer (CPPO) and has been certified as a professional procurement officer by both Maryland and Virginia. He has over thirty years in public and private purchasing working at all levels of state government, with procurement experience in all forms of IT, construction, transportation, facilities and other goods and services. He currently serves on the UPPCC Board and previously served as an officer on the NASPO Board and as a member on the ValuePoint Board.

Before joining the government, he was chief procurement officer for an international non-governmental organization (NGO) operating in over 20 countries, and worked briefly with Circuit City Stores, Inc. after twelve years in the U.S. Army Field Artillery, and the NATO Central European office responsible for strategic theater planning and operations. He has a BA from the Virginia Military Institute and holds certifications in Advanced Logistics Executive Development Course from the USA Logistics Management College, and Systems Management from the University of Southern California.