The Defense Department’s (DOD) Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) announced several personnel changes via LinkedIn over the weekend. It said the moves would support efforts to modernize defense information systems and broader priorities across the DOD, which has been rebranded as the War Department by the Trump administration.
Here is a recap of the key personnel changes:
- Vishal Aswani stepped down from his position as chief of staff, a role he held for the past year, and assumed the role of special advisor for transformation. In the new role, Aswani will support large-scale organizational change and business process re-engineering efforts aimed at improving agility and effectiveness within the office
- Kayla Huthoefer Nelson will serve as the new chief of staff. In this role, according to the announcement, she will support leadership priorities across the DOD information, technology, and digital modernization enterprise, specifically overseeing the operational tempo and strategic management of the OCIO.
- David Vaughn was named technical advisor for data infrastructure. His responsibilities include advising on policy development, risk mitigation strategies, and the integration of advanced cyber capabilities
- Ryan McArthur will serve as special advisor to the CIO for capability development and operational excellence. In this role, he will advise on emerging technologies and oversee complex technical initiatives supporting cyber and IT modernization efforts
According to his LinkedIn profile, Aswani has served in the DOD OCIO since July 2023, when he joined the directorate for DOD CISO Cyberspace Activities Budget Oversight. Prior to that, he was a senior contracting officer’s technical representative and program manager at the National Reconnaissance Office. He also serves as an aerospace engineering duty officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
Nelson is a new face to the DOD, most recently she served as a senior defense advisor in the Colorado Aerospace & Defense Economic Council. Nelson also has served in several roles within the private sector, including as director for Strategic Capture at BAE Systems, where she led the development and execution of business winning and growth strategies for the company.
Vaughn, a decorated cybersecurity executive and U.S. Army chief warrant officer 4 in cyber operations, brings nearly three decades of experience spanning cyber warfare, intelligence, and enterprise risk management, the DOD OCIO said. Previously, he served as a senior cloud security engineer at the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) Hosting and Compute Center for nearly four years.
McArthur departed the public sector in March 2024 after serving nearly two years as executive program manager for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program, where he led the $9 billion effort at DISA. He later joined the private sector as federal chief technology officer for the public sector at Zscaler. McArthur is a retired U.S. Army chief warrant officer with more than two decades of experience advancing innovation across the full spectrum of information technology, according to his LinkedIn profile.