Thomas Sasala

Deputy Director, Office of Enterprise Management

U.S. Army

As the Deputy Director, U.S. Army Office of Enterprise Management (OEM), Mr. Sasala leads organization-wide operational initiatives and assists the Director in managing the Army Business Mission Area (BMA) portfolio. He also directly supports the Under Secretary of the Army (USA) with essential enterprise metrics, spanning a wide range of functional and mission-oriented performance indicators, and works closely with the Army Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) to manage defense business systems, master business data, and provide oversight of business system investments.

Prior to his role as the Deputy Director, Sasala served as the Chief Data Officer (CDO) for the Department of the Navy where he was responsible for implementing the Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary
(OPEN) Government Data Act, training the Naval workforce on data and data analytics, and making high quality, timely data available to decision-makers and warfighters. He executed his statutory responsibilities as the CDO by establishing data management priorities, driving change through the Navy Data Strategy Implementation Plan, and implementing the Department of Navy Data Management  concept of Employment.

Prior to joining the Department of the Navy, Mr. Sasala served as Director, Army Architecture Integration Center and Chief Data Officer for the U.S. Army. In this role, he led data governance and analytics across
the Army, was responsible for the implementation and migration to cloud computing and developed segment and systems architectures. Mr. Sasala also served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Joint
Service Provider (JSP) and the U.S. Army Information Technology Agency (ITA), where he was responsible for the modernization of Pentagon information technology (IT) solutions.

Mr. Sasala began his career as a student trainee at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). After graduating from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, he returned to NRL and pursued a Master of Science in Telecommunication and Computers. While serving at NRL, Mr. Sasala led a variety of mission-critical projects, including advance research and development in public key cryptography, software-defined agile cryptography and key management, and the modernization of strategic communication solutions for nuclear command and control systems.

After leaving NRL, Sasala joined the private sector where he supported a variety of clients as a consultant. His many roles include chief architect for the All-Source Analytics Environment, chief architect and
technical advisor for the Analytic Transformation (AT) program, and Program Manager (PM) for various initiatives within the defense and intelligence spaces. Additionally, Mr. Sasala spent almost two years
developing cutting-edge data and training solutions at an Internet startup, targeting the public educational market.

In 2014, Mr. Sasala received the prestigious “Bold Award,” which recognizes excellence in all areas of design enterprise, for “Innovation,” recognizing his creative problem-solving, technical acumen, ambition,
and persistence. In 2015, he was named a “Fed 100” honoring the top 100 contributors across federal, state, and local governments.

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