Dr. David A. Bray is the Chief Ventures Officer and Director of the Office of Ventures and Innovation at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Previoulsy, Bray was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Through the efforts of a team of positive "change agents," he transformed the FCC's legacy IT with more than 207 different systems to award-winning tech in less than two years. This included rolling-out new cloud-based IT that achieved results in half the time at 1/6 the cost. In 2015, the FCC IT Team received AFFIRM's 2015 Cloud Computing Leadership Award. Bray was also selected to be one of the "Fedscoop 50" for Leadership in 2014, one of FCW's "Fed 100" winners in 2015, and received the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association's Outstanding Achievement Award for Civilian Government in 2015.
Bray began working for the U.S. government at age 15 on computer simulations at a Department of Energy facility. In later roles he designed new telemedicine interfaces and space-based forest fire forecasting prototypes for the Department of Defense. From 1998-2000 he volunteered as an occasional crew lead with Habitat for Humanity International in the Philippines, Honduras, Romania, and Nepal while also working as a project manager with Yahoo! and a Microsoft partner firm. He then joined as IT Chief for the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the program's technology response to 9/11 and anthrax in 2001, Severe Acute Respiratory System in 2003, and other international public health emergencies. He later completed a PhD in Information Systems from Emory University.
In 2009, Bray volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan to help "think differently" on military and humanitarian issues and in 2010 became a Senior National Intelligence Service Executive advocating for increased information interoperability, cybersecurity, and protection of civil liberties. In 2012, Bray became the Executive Director for the bipartisan National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs of the United States Intelligence Community, later receiving the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal. He received both the Arthur S. Flemming Award and Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership in 2013. He also was chosen to be an Eisenhower Fellow to meet with leaders in Taiwan and Australia on multisector cyber strategies for the "Internet of Everything" in 2015.
Bray has been named the "Most Social CIO" globally in 2015 by both Forbes Magazine and the Huffington-Post, tweeting as @fcc_cio.
