Dorothy Aronson

As CIO for the last two-and-a-half years, Dorothy Aronson has led the management of the National Science Foundation’s IT in support of its cutting-edge research. In that role, Aronson has grown to be a passionate advocate for the federal IT workforce, serving as a co-chair of the Federal CIO Council’s Workforce Committee. In her leadership roles, she thinks of her work like that of an orchestra conductor. “There are no individual heroes because the technology services that we provide to the citizens and to each other are comprised of a conglomeration of different technologies like infrastructure and tools and data, security, policy, software, user experience and also the voice of the customer. So we can’t function alone. The leaders within our organizations bring those different kinds of people together and help them interact in a synchronous way like an orchestra or ballet and they enable us to create efficiently and also to build upon each other’s strengths.”