Melissa Sutherland leads the digital solutions development business within Booz Allen’s national defense military intelligence account. Based out of our Norfolk, Virginia, office, she is also a leader in the firm’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief information officer and science and technology business.
Melissa has more than 20 years of professional experience serving the defense and intelligence communities, specializing in the delivery of mission-critical software systems to the U.S. government. She is responsible for overall technical development, implementation, and modernization of the DIA’s applications and data services, including managing cost, schedule, and risk for overall contract performance while driving modernization.
Prior to joining Booz Allen in 2007, Melissa served as the government civilian director of the Joint Intelligence Laboratory Experimentation Division in support of the Joint Transformation Command, Intelligence (JTC-I). There she led the conduct of intelligence experimentation and engineering design events on behalf of the intelligence community.
Her expertise includes managing a diverse division of innovation and experimentation project teams and the application of innovative information technology approaches to defense intelligence problems. During her tour at JTC-I, she also served as the government advisor on the Army Science Board, which included providing recommendations to the Secretary of the Army on scientific and technical engineering matters. Additionally, Melissa served for 8 years as a signals intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps, where she conducted real-time intelligence operations and commanded signals intelligence collection teams.
She is a certified cloud architect, change management practitioner, service-oriented architecture consultant, and information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) practitioner. In 2012 she was awarded the Society of Women Engineers’ Emerging Leader Award.
Melissa holds an M.S. in telecommunications management from the University of Maryland University College and a B.S. in biology from the University of New Mexico.
