Karen Dahut comes from information technology firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where she has worked for two decades, according to her LinkedIn profile. She takes over a Google subsidiary that launched in June and is charged with helping local, state, federal and education agencies in the U.S. build better digital tools, according to the tech giant.
The launch of this unit reflects the increasing movement of public agencies to the cloud.
Dahut starts her new job Oct. 31, according to a blog post from Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. Will Grannis, who designed Google Public Sector and worked as its founding CEO, will return to his job as CTO of Google Cloud.
As Google put it in a blog post announcing the hire of Dahut, the subsidiary “brings Google technologies to government and education customers at scale, including open and scalable infrastructure; advanced data and analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning; modern collaboration tools like Google Workspace; advanced cybersecurity products; and more.”
At Booz Allen Hamilton, Dahut was president of the company’s Global Defense Sector, which brought in $4 billion in annual revenue — half of the total revenue for the firm, according to her LinkedIn. She helped the U.S. Department of Defense “prepare for the new digital battlespace by using advanced technologies to enrich data for operational decisions,” she wrote.
She also was group leader for the company’s Civil and Commercial Group — which involved working with Homeland Security and other federal agencies — and served as Booz Allen Hamilton’s first chief innovation officer, a job that focused on such work as cloud operations, data science and digital technologies.
Her work before Booz Allen Hamilton includes six years of service in the U.S. Navy, where she rose to the rank of lieutenant and worked on biomedical research.
“With more than 25 years of experience in technology, cybersecurity and analytics, Karen is a highly accomplished executive who has built businesses, developed and executed large-scale growth strategies and created differentiated solutions across both commercial and federal industries,” Kurian wrote in the blog post.
Google already works with such major public-sector clients as the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and ASU Prep Digital, a remote learning operation, according to Kurian.
“We believe Google Public Sector will continue to play a critical role in applying cloud technology to solve complex problems for our nation — across U.S. federal, state and local governments, and educational institutions,” Kurian wrote.
