Sean Roche

Sean Roche

Former Associate Deputy Director for Digital Innovation | Central Intelligence Agency

For more than three decades, Sean Roche has accelerated the adoption, implementation and operation of disruptive technologies that have transformed platforms, missions and enterprise organizations. He led the successful delivery of a wide range of first-of-kind, next-generation capabilities and systems for the US Intelligence Community and Department of Defense. He is a frequent international keynote speaker, providing his perspectives on overcoming the challenges organizations face when the necessity of innovation drives the need for large-scale change at the speed of mission. He serves on Director’s Boards and Advisory Committees to a wide variety of companies in the aerospace, energy, finance and
technology investment sectors.

On President-Elect Biden’s Transition Team, Roche led reviews and provided assessments of cyber security, satellite reconnaissance and digital transformation for US intelligence and defense. As the Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Digital Innovation, he led the acceleration CIA’s digital transformation by leveraging the AWS Commercial Cloud Services (C2S). He commanded a worldwide digital workforce entrusted to retire, rearchitect and rehost legacy systems to an agile and resilient next-generation digital cloud infrastructure. This transition was accomplished without any disruption to mission services while significantly enhancing overall cyber security. Previous assignments during his career were devoted to the development, deployment and operation of covert and clandestine collection systems hosted in harsh, remote, and unattended environments. He developed and led technical and operational partnerships with more than two dozen nations and had deployments and temporary duty assignments to more than fifty. Roche also retired in the rank of Colonel from the US Air Force Reserves after 29 years of service.