Nagesh Rao
Chief Information Officer

G. Nagesh Rao currently serves as Chief Information Officer for the Bureau of Industry and Security within the US Department of Commerce. Most recently he was Director of Business Technology Solutions (BiTS) at the US Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of the Chief Information Officer, and prior to was Chief Technologist & Entrepreneur in Residence within SBA’s Office of Investment & Innovation.

Over the last 20+ years, Nagesh has worked for numerous organizations in the public, private, and not for profit sectors. During his time in the public-sector, he has co-developed federal-wide policy initiatives around spurring small business and technological innovation as well programmatic endeavors such as i6 Green, Patents for Humanity, USAID’s-SBAR Program, and SBA’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. Furthermore he oversaw the revamp and modernization of SBA’s digital platforms including SBIR.gov and SBA.gov, as well led technology direction, as part of SBA’s COVID-19 leadership response team, with respect to the agency’s Virtual Command Center, PPP and EIDL endeavors via the CARES Act. Under Nagesh’s current leadership, the Bureau’s OCIO staff has been fully reconstituted and has commenced with a multi-year digital modernization process to adopt use of COTS, Cloud, and SaaS based technology solutions to enhance and support the operational business and mission.

Nagesh is a Mirzayan Fellow of The National Academies, an Eisenhower Fellow and a Marshall Memorial Fellow. Among many accolades that Nagesh has received over the years, recent prominent ones include the Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman & Hind Rattan awards from the NRI Welfare Society, Fed 100, FedScoop 50, ACT-IAC Collaboration Award, DC Inno 50 on Fire, and the 2019 Gears of Government award.