Dr. Patrick O’Connell

Chief Digital Transformation Officer

U.S. Department of the Navy

Dr. Patrick O’Connell joined the Department of the Navy in January 2016 as the Executive Director to the Chief of Naval Personnel via an industry-to government exchange program. His primary remit was to lead the modernization and transformation of the enterprise and its global “hire to retire” processes, activities and technologies for the Navy’s Manpower, Personnel, and Training & Education organizations for active, reserve and dependent personnel. After setting the foundations and delivering the first new capabilities, Dr. O’Connell was tasked to scale the transformation to all Navy. He currently serves as the Navy’s Chief Digital Transformation Officer with the charter to lead, coordinate, orchestrate and accelerate the end-to-end digital transformation of the Navy in support of maintaining global maritime superiority now and in the future.
Dr. O’Connell has over 35 years of executive experience leading complex, high-value, technology- based organizations and businesses in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. His domain experience spans Health, Defense, NATO and the Civil sectors. For the last 20 years, he has
served at the CEO/President level in companies to include Raytheon, Thales, British Telcom, CH2M Hill, and Serco, focusing on exceptional growth, major enterprise turnarounds and transformations, and recovering and/or starting ultra-large public-private programs.
Dr. O’Connell has a PhD in Computer Science and co-founded a new Master of Science degree in Major Program Management at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, England. He subsequently helped establish and structure the UK government’s Major Projects Leadership Academy, which was designed to advise senior UK government leadership on structuring and de- risking ultra-large national-level programs. He lectured at Oxford as the Practitioner Director for eight years and became the Chairman of the Advisory Board, Center for Major Program Management. Today, he lectures in the George Washington University’s Executive MBA program.

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