Katie Savage

Deputy CDAO for Digital Services, Department of Defense

As the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Services, now a directorate under the department’s new Chief Digital and AI Office, Katie Savage, née Olson, has learned that leadership cannot be done alone. “Leadership cannot rest on a single individual. Developing a vision, making and communicating decisions, and building a healthy culture are ideally a virtuous circle within a team: you make decisions in collaboration with your team; the collaboration makes it easy for everyone to understand and execute; the sense of ownership and empowerment consequently developed in your culture feed collaboration in the next set of decisions,” she told FedScoop. As an integral part in standing up the new CDAO office, Savage’s biggest priority ahead is “championing talent, tools and infrastructure.” She explained that her team is her biggest asset. “We cannot accomplish our CDAO mission of using data to create decision advantage without a deep bench of individuals and teams who know how to collect, manage, and use data.”