Army Gen. Keith Alexander serves as director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, having led NSA since August 2005 and Cybercom since May 2010.

At NSA, the 38-year Army veteran leads that agency’s national foreign intelligence, combat support and U.S. national security information system activities.

At Cybercom, a component of Strategic Command, he is responsible for planning, coordinating and conducting operations and defense of the Defense Department’s computer networks.

Some of his previous assignments include service as deputy chief of staff at the Department of the Army; commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command; director of intelligence at Central Command; and deputy director for requirements, capabilities, assessments and doctrine for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Alexander has held command assignments in Germany and the U.S. including commander of the Border Field Office, 511th MI Battalion, 66th MI Group; 336th Army Security Agency Company, 525th MI Group; 204th MI Battalion; and 525th MI Brigade.

He has also served as deputy director and operations officer of the Army Intelligence Master Plan for the deputy chief of staff for Intelligence; S-3 and Executive Officer for the 522nd MI Battalion, 2nd Armored Division; G-2 for the 1st Armored Division both in Germany and Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia.

Alexander holds a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy, an M.B.A. from Boston University, and both a master’s in systems technology-electronic warfare and a master’s in physics from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also holds a master’s in national security strategy from the National Defense University.

He has also attended Armor Officer Basic Course, the Military Intelligence Officer Advanced Course, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the National War College.

Badges he has received include the Senior Parachutist Badge, the Army Staff Identification Badge and the Joint Chief of Staff Identification Badge.

Some recent coverage of Gen. Alexander:

Keith Alexander Sketches Out Agency Cyber Roles, Responsibilities at Symantec Forum

Keith Alexander: Update Cyber Laws to Improve US Posture

Gary Wang serves as director of the intelligence systems and architectures directorate within the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Strategy, Programs and Resources.

Appointed to this post in January 2012, he holds executive oversight of intelligence programs in the armed services and defense agencies.

Wang was named to the Senior Executive Service in 2005 and held executive positions at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command prior to his current position.

His SES positions at SPAWAR included director of corporate operations and command information officer, national competency lead for science and technology, and director of the science, technology and engineering department at SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific.

As science director, he coordinated the center’s scientific and technical programs, directed the formulation of technical alternatives to align with military requirements and led transition of technology into the naval fleet.

Between 1988 and 2004, he held several managerial positions at SPAWAR, including three years as program manager for ISR and information operations, where he led the development and acquisition of cryptologic, meteorological, operational effects and intelligence programs for the Navy.

Wang started his federal service career in 1983 as a project engineer at the Naval Underwater Systems Center, where he worked on the MK-48 Advanced Capability torpedo program.

He has also served as executive assistant for information technology in the program executive office for space communications and sensors, division director for technology transition, assistant program manager for combat direction finding, a test and evaluation director and software manager for signals intelligence programs.

Wang holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas and is a recipient of two Special Act Awards and three Navy Superior Civilian Service Awards.

Katie Lewin serves as program manager for cloud computing at the General Services Administration, where she is responsible for identifying, developing and delivering methods for agencies to use cloud computing.

GSA’s cloud program includes Apps.gov, cloud-based email, security-as-a-service and data center consolidation.

Prior to this position, she served as chief of staff to the agency’s CIO.

Before joining GSA, Lewin was an information technology consultant at SRA International and Lockheed Martin, where she worked with clients at the Internal Revenue Service, other financial management agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration.

She started her federal service career at the Library of Congress and has also worked at the Office of Management and Budget and IRS.

Lewin holds a master’s degree in library and information science from Dominican University and an undergraduate degree in American history from Trinity University.

David Wennergren serves as the Defense Department‘s assistant deputy chief management officer, where he promotes efforts to synchronize, integrate and optimize the department’s business operations.

The 30-year government service veteran also serves as the principal deputy to the department’s deputy chief management officer.

Prior to his position, he served as deputy assistant defense secretary for information management, integration and technology as well as deputy chief information officer.

In those positions, he led the department’s information technology and management efforts. He has also served as vice chairman of the Federal CIO Council for five years, chaired the Committee for National Security Systems and chaired the Department of Defense Identity Protection and Management Senior Coordinating Group.

During his tenure as group chairman, he promoted deployment of the Pentagon’s common access card.

He has also served as the director of both the department’s Business Transformation Agency and DoD-Veterans Affairs Interagency Program Office, having responsibility for the delivery of health IT services to soldiers, their families and veterans.

While serving as the Department of the Navy’s CIO for four years, he also acted as the department’s critical infrastructure assurance officer. He also served for four years as that department’s deputy CIO for enterprise integration and security.

Other previous assignments in the DON include redesigning the branch’s shore installation management structure, the Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure teams for BRAC-93 and BRAC-95, the Commercial Activities Program and time as a management analyst at naval field activities.

Wennergren is a recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the Department of the Navy Distinguished, Superior and Meritorious Civilian Service Awards, the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Civilian Service Award.

He has also been selected as the TechAmerica Terman Award 2010 Government Technology Executive of the Year, the Federal CIO Council 2008 Azimuth Award winner, the Government Computer News 2005 Defense Executive of the Year, the 2006 John J. Franke Jr. Award from the American Council for Technology, the Federal Computer Week 2006 Eagle Award as Government Leader of the Year, three Federal Computer Week Fed 100 Awards, the Computerworld Premiere 100 Award and the 2008 General James M. Rockwell AFCEAN of the Year.

Wennergren has worked in two organizations selected for the the Department of the Navy’s Meritorious Unit Commendation.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and public relations from Mansfield State University and is a recipient of a Secretary of the Navy Civilian Fellowship in Financial Management.

That recognition resulted in a Master of Public Policy in public sector financial management from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs.

Richard Spires serves as chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, where he oversees the department’s $6.8 billion information technology investment portfolio.

Spires, appointed CIO in September 2009, also leads and facilitates portfolio management, development, implementation and maintenance of the department’s IT architecture.

He spoke to a AFCEA chapter event in May on the department’s consolidation initiative across 22 agencies (click here for more coverage of that initiative).

He serves as chairman of both the DHS Chief Information Officer Council and the Enterprise Architecture Board, and is a member of the Federal CIO Council, where he was selected vice chairman in January 2011.

Spires also serves as co-chair of the council’s Federal Data Center Consolidation Task Force and previously co-chaired the Management Best Practices Committee.

Between 2004 and 2008, he held several positions at the Internal Revenue Service including deputy commissioner for operations support, where he was responsible for support and administrative functions including IT, human capital, finance, shared services, real estate and security functions.

Before becoming deputy commissioner, Spires served as CIO of the IRS, where he held overall strategic and operational responsibility for a $2 billion budget and a 7,000-person modernization and information technology services organization.

He was also responsible as CIO for maintaining more than 400 systems administering nearly 200 million taxpayer records and supporting more than 100,000 IRS employees.

Spires also served for two-and-half-years as the associate CIO for applications development and led the IRS’ business systems modernization program.

His private sector experience includes three years as president, chief operating officer and director of business intelligence software provider Mantas, where he also led efforts to raise $29 million in venture funding.

Prior to Mantas, he spent a 16-year career at SRA International and held technical and managerial positions.

Spires holds bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and a mathematical sciences from the University of Cincinnati, where he was named a distinguished alumnus by the college of engineering in 2006.

He also holds a master’s degree in electrical Eengineering from the George Washington University.

Patricia Shiu serves as director of the Labor Department‘s office of federal contract compliance programs, where she leads an 800-employee staff in enforcing equal employment opportunity regulations for the federal contracting sector.

She also serves on the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force, responsible for enforcing the 1983 Equal Pay Act, and represents Labor Secretary Hilda Solis on a federal interagency working group for the White House’s initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Before joining the Obama administration, she served as vice president for programs at the Legal Aid Society’s employment law center in San Francisco, which she joined in 1983.

She spent 26 years in the center as a staff attorney, representing individuals in both individual and class action cases focused on employment discrimination. Those cases involved issues such as gender, race, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration, disability, domestic violence and harassment.

Shiu also argued wage and hour and reproductive health hazard cases.

As director of the society’s work and family project, she advocated for the passage of California’s Family Rights Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act and paid sick leave legislation. She also advocated for expanded educational access under Title IX and disability laws.

She started her career as an associate with Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro and San Francisco and was president of California Women Lawyers in 1987.

In 1993, then-Education Secretary Richard Riley appointed her to the Education Department’s Civil Rights Reviewing Authority.

Shiu has also served as vice president of the National Employment Lawyers Association and in 2009 she was recognized with the Joe Morozumi Lifetime Achievement Award.

She is also a recipient of the Abby J. Leibman Pursuit of Justice Award and the Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area Coalition’s “Women Warrior Award.”

Shiu is a graduate of the University of California-Berkley and the University of San Francisco’s School of Law.

Steve Cooper serves as chief information officer and acting assistant administrator for information services at the Federal Aviation Administration.

He previously served as information technology director and CIO of the FAA’s air traffic organization, where he guided the planning, risk management, information delivery, solution delivery and operations activities of the IT organization supporting the 50,000 employees and contractors of the ATO and FAA.

In 2003, then-President George W. Bush appointed him as the first CIO of the Department of Homeland Security, where he led the implementation of a secure data network for exchanging classified homeland security information between defense and civilian agencies.

He also worked with the FBI to deploy a homeland security information network for sharing sensitive information with state and local agencies, first responders and private sector organizations owning critical infrastructure.

Cooper developed DHS’ first IT strategic plan, stood up its day one IT operations and testified frequently before Congress on cyber and information security matters and use of IT to achieve homeland security mission objectives.

Earlier, Cooper was appointed special assistant to the president for homeland security and senior director for information integration in the White House’s homeland security office, where he led the integration of terrorist watch list and implemented information sharing within the federal government and with state, local and relevant private sector entities.

In between his service at DHS and the FAA, Cooper served as the senior vice president and CIO of the American Red Cross, where he and his IT teams implemented the introduction of a national call center to provide emergency assistance to 4 million people displaced from their homes during Hurricane Katrina.

His teams also provided the IT systems delivering more than half the nation’s blood supplyand provided IT services supporting more than 100 million Americans receiving Red Cross services across America.

Cooper was named one of the “Top 100 CIOs in America” by CIO Insight in 2007 and was named by the Washington Post as “One of the Five to Watch” while serving in the White House.

He has also been named Government Civilian Executive of the Year by Government Computer News; a “Titan of Technology” by the Northern Virginia Technology Council as a Titan of Technology; and is a recipient of the Fed 100 Award, which recognizes the 100 most influential people in federal government technology.

Prior to his federal government service, the Ohio Wesleyan University alumnus spent more than twenty years in the private sector with Eli Lilly and Corning Inc. and served during the Vietnam conflict as a Naval Air Reserve petty officer.

Dr. Keith Littlefield serves as chief information officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Springfield, Va.-based mapping agency led by Letitia Long.

Before joining NGA, Littlefield served as associate deputy director of national intelligence for acquisition, technology and facilities in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from September 2009 to July 2011, where he also served as ODNI’s senior acquisition executive and leadership and oversight to more than 50 system acquisitions in the intelligence community.

Those acquisitions were worth more than $150 billion, according to NGA.

In that capacity, Littlefield also provided guidance on space planning and facility upgrades for more than IC facilities worldwide and worked with the Pentagon’s acquisition office on acquisition workforce competency across the IC.

He also led acquisition at NGA between 2007 and 2009 as director. As functional manager for acquisition systems, he was responsible for systems engineering, program management and contracts management for the development and deployment of the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence.

Littlefield also served as the chief acquisition executive at NGA, holding responsibility for providing leadership and guidance on all agency acquisition activities. He also served as director of the InnoVision directorate, where he was responsible for managing GEOINT advanced research and development in 2006, and was also formerly the deputy director of acquisition between 2003 and 2005.

He initially joined NGA in 1983, when it was known as the Defense Mapping Agency, and was initially assigned to the Digital Products Department at the Hydrographic/Topographic Center, prior to moving into the Division Techniques Office in 1985.

In 1986, he was promoted to the special program office for exploitation and modernization and held several senior level program manager positions, tasked with the technical development, integration and implementation of state-of-the-art digital mapping systems.

In May 1993, he became the senior technical adviser for advanced cartography as a defense intelligence senior level. Nearly four years later, he was promoted to the defense intelligence Senior Executive Service as the Chief of the U.S. Imagery and Geospatial Information System Architecture Office, subsequently serving as the deputy and director of the Acquisition Systems Office.

Littlefield holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Maryland, specializing in geographic information systems and remote sensing. He also graduated from the University of Virginia in 1981 as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow, with a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning. Prior to that, he graduated from Mary Washington College in 1979, with a double major in geography and economics.

Littlefield is a recipient of the DNI’s National Intelligence Superior Service Medal, awarded in 2011, and the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive, awarded in 2010. He also received the NGA Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 2009.

Dr. Patrick Gallagher serves as director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and as commerce undersecretary for standards and technology.

He was confirmed as the 14th director of NIST Nov. 5, 2009 for Standards and Technology and his undersecretary post was created through the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, signed by President Barack Obama Jan. 4, 2011.

He also serves as co-chair of the Standards Subcommittee under the White House’s National Science and Technology Council.

Gallagher provides high-level oversight and direction for NIST, which promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology.

In June, he helped open two new NIST labs in Boulder, Colo. for testing lasers, atomic clocks and nanotechnology and said the labs will also aim to advance quantum computing (click over to TheNewNewInternet for more coverage).

Gallagher previously served as deputy director since 2008 and prior to that he served for four years as director of the NIST’s center for neutron research, a national user facility for neutron scattering on NIST’s Gaithersburg, Md. campus.

According to NIST, his research interests include neutron and X-ray instrumentation and studies of soft condensed matter systems such as liquids, polymers and gels.

In 2000, Gallagher was a NIST agency representative at the National Science and Technology Council and has been active in U.S. policy for scientific user facilities.

He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1991.

Alan Shaffer is principal deputy and assistant defense secretary for research and engineering, where he formulates, plans and reviews Defense Department programs and plans for research, development, test and evaluation.

He also oversees strategy and execution, including reviewing technology maturity as part of the acquisition cycle and also serves as chairman of the Pentagon’s modeling and simulation committee.

Shaffer entered the Senior Executive Service in 2000 upon his retirement from the Air Force after a 27-year career, initially appointed as director of multi-disciplinary systems within the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology.

In 2001, he became director of plans and programs for research and engineering and continues to serve as director and principal deputy. As director, he oversees the Pentagon’s nearly $10.5 billion science and technology portfolio

Shafer has served as executive director for several task forces including the Technical Joint Cross Service Group during the Base Realignment and
Closure activity; DoD Energy Security Task Force in 2007 and most recently the Mine Resistant Ambush Protection Task Force.

His Air Force assignments included the fields of weather, intelligence, science and technology management, acquisition oversight and programming. His career included deployment  to Honduras in support of Joint Task Force Bravo in the mid-1980s and direct support of the Army’s 3rd Armored Division at Hanau, Germany.

During Operation Desert Storm, he was responsible for deployment of the 500-person theater weather force. Other assignments included Wing Weather Officer supporting the 320th Bombardment Wing (Heavy) at Mather Air Force Base, Calif.; intelligence officer at the foreign technology division in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; and deputy director of weather for Air  Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va,

He also served in staff assignments in the Air Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Air Force Weather Agency at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.

Shaffer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Vermont in 1976 and a second Bachelor of Science in meteorology from the
University of Utah. He also holds a Master of Science in Meteorology from the Naval Postgraduate School and a Master of Science in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial  College of the Armed Forces.

He has been awarded the Distinguished Executive Presidential Rank Award in 2007 and the Meritorious Executive Presidential Rank Award in 2004.