Meet Will Richardson, Senior Manager Sales Engineering
Senior Manager, Sales Engineering, Will Richardson has spent 20 years in public sector — but it took joining Abnormal to connect the work to something personal, and to discover an entirely new way of working.
May 6, 2026
Will Richardson has spent 20 years in public sector — and like a lot of people who build long careers in this space, it started simply. Growing up and working in the DC area, covering government, education, and public institutions was the natural path. Twenty years later, the reason he stays has nothing to do with proximity.
It has everything to do with the people on the other side of the deal.
The Stakes are Different Here
Will joined Abnormal as SE Manager for the Public Sector team 17 months ago, bringing two decades of experience protecting government and education customers. What he found at Abnormal was something he hadn't encountered before — moments where the work stopped feeling like sales and started feeling like service.
During proof-of-value evaluations with prospective school districts, the Abnormal platform has surfaced active fraud in progress. Not historical incidents. Not theoretical risk. Live attacks, mid-POV, where real money was in motion.
"Having our account teams be able to call those prospects to stop any sort of potential payments from being followed through on and being wired to the bad actors is huge," Will said.
"We are talking about school districts that are mostly underfunded to begin with, so any funds that could potentially be lost to fraud is a massive detriment to the children and to the community as a whole."
For Will, that's not an abstract customer outcome. He's a father of fourth and sixth graders. His neighbors are school teachers, police officers, counselors, and federal procurement officers.
"To be able to offer them a solution that helps protect their email, which may seem trivial, but taking that off their plate allows them to concentrate on the things that our community needs from them," he said. "And that's just a fantastic feeling."
Government workers are routinely understaffed, Will points out, while still expected to deliver on missions that range from educating children to providing healthcare to veterans to landing rovers on Mars. Anything that removes friction from that work matters.
"Anything that I can do to help them focus on those missions and achieving them on a day-to-day basis is a win for our country and communities throughout the United States."
Starting from Zero
The mission side of the story was familiar territory for Will. The technology side was not.
When he joined Abnormal 17 months ago, his relationship with AI was, in his own words, mostly non-existent. He'd sold solutions that claimed AI capabilities at previous companies, but he's candid about what that actually meant. The technology wasn't native. It was bolted on — feature-deep at best, and nowhere close to what he'd find at Abnormal.
"Prior to joining Abnormal, my relationship with AI was mostly non-existent, other than talking about it in the solutions that we were selling. And even that could be argued wasn't true AI."
The first shift was straightforward — an AI note-taker on calls. Nora, Spinach AI, Gong. Tools that seemed small until he realized how much mental bandwidth he'd been spending on transcription instead of listening.
"A lot of times previously I would be writing notes down and I might miss something that somebody was saying. Now I can rely on that to just take the notes for me and go back and review and leverage next steps and all the things that come with that. And that was massive for me."
From there, the habit compounded. Will now uses AI daily across his role — Glean to surface internal product information, Gemini to accelerate presentations and spreadsheet work, purpose-built agents to support performance reviews and account health reviews.
"I can very quickly use those agents to go out and tell me what is going on with a customer — support cases, SE engagement, tech win, any sort of product issues — which saves massive amounts of time for me in my role."
His next goal is forecasting. He's already thinking about where the next unlock is.
What the Team Made Possible
Will is clear that this transformation didn't happen in isolation. The environment at Abnormal created the conditions for it. The team's willingness to experiment with AI — not as a mandate but as a shared curiosity — is something he hadn't seen at previous companies.
"What feels different about this team compared to other places I've worked is the open-mindedness to leverage AI to make yourself more efficient, effective, impactful, and innovative for the benefit of our customers and each other."
That mindset runs through the SE team he manages. Will describes watching his team dig into AI tools not because they're required to, but because they're genuinely curious about what's possible. People who covered public sector for the first time sit alongside people who've done it for 30 years, and both groups are learning together.
That's the part he didn't expect — that his own reinvention would happen alongside his team's, not ahead of it.
The Ride is Worth Taking
For anyone weighing a role at Abnormal, Will's advice is direct.
"Come ready to learn and check your ego at the door."
He's seen what happens when people do. The career growth, the relationships, the compounding effect of being in an environment that's genuinely moving forward.
"If you are willing to embrace a learning mindset, you will have a massive positive influence on your career, your teammates, and most importantly, your customers and community."
Twenty years into a public sector career, Will Richardson is still finding new ways to do the work. The mission hasn't changed — but how he shows up for it has. At Abnormal, that kind of reinvention isn't the exception. It's the expectation.
