Maria Roat

CIO, Small Business Administration

For nearly three years Roat has served as the IT chief at the SBA, bringing with her more than 30 years of professional experience. During that time, her team has emerged as a sort of gold standard for successful cloud migration in the federal government. Roat said in 2017, “The biggest challenge that I have to deal with, honestly, are the people issues, the workforce issues. Some of the challenge is making sure the workforce, they understand your vision and they understand your thinking and where you’re leading your agency or your department … making sure they have the skills — and that you’re doing what you need to do to train them to support that vision.”