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Roy Varghese serves as the Assistant Chief Information Officer (ACIO) for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries). In this capacity, Roy is responsible for providing strategic vision and leadership in the design, development, and delivery of digital products and services that support the 4,200 NOAA Fisheries staff including scientists, policy managers, and law enforcement officers located across the country, and at the national headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Roy is focused on building an empowered, customer-centric community of IT practitioners that imagine, build, and maintain solutions that harness the power of technology innovations and partnerships that impact the mission. Since assuming the ACIO position at NOAA Fisheries, Roy has implemented policies that increase the pace of IT modernization; designed a maturity assessment approach to identify and improve cybersecurity posture; and collaborated with stakeholders to execute a digital strategy that included modernizing Fisheries’ web presence and management of its social media platforms. Under Roy’s leadership, NOAA Fisheries Web teams have been recognized for their achievements and have received a number of awards, including the Muse Award for web design, the Acquia Engage Public Sector Leader of the Pack for digital experiences in 2018, and the 2019 Webby Award.
Before joining NOAA in 2009, Roy held various positions in the private sector, where he helped several federal agencies modernize IT systems and improve cybersecurity posture. Roy is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) where he is researching the links between strategic management interventions and organizational outcomes. He has also earned an MBA from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Towson University.