George Forbes

Director, Operations Digital Enterprise & Functional CIO & CDAO

U.S. Air Force

Mr. Forbes is a 1990 graduate of Virginia Tech where he was conferred a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering. Upon graduation Mr. Forbes was commissioned in the US Air Force where he went on to serve as a Civil Engineering Officer at the base level, theater level, MAJCOM, and HQ Air Force. During his assignments he was an expert in expeditionary operations infused with data science. He was the principal base camp planner in the CENTCOM AOR including a tour with the Royal Saudi Air Force. Deployments included Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, and multiple locations in the Middle East and Asia. He also commanded a specialty engineering Explosive Demolition Team and pioneered the USAF-wide development of GeoBase.
Following his USAF service, Mr. Forbes went into the private sector performing executive and senior project management roles for mega-construction projects worth several billion dollars that employed upwards of 5,000 craftsmen in the Arabian Gulf region with MILCON and Oil and Gas companies based out of Doha, Qatar and Paris, France.
Following this portion of his career, Mr. Forbes returned to the USA and entered in Civil Service with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. While there, he became the Division Director for an inspection demonstration project that modernized and digitized the inspection process for the Section 8 portfolio nationwide, over 2.2 million units. In 2020 he and his team won the Federal Gears of Government Award for IT Innovation and became HUDs center of excellence for Data Analytics and Data Visualization. Most recently, Mr. Forbes served at HUD as the Senior Advisor to the Chief Data Officer, the Chief Technology Officer and the Agency Secretary related to Data Science.
Mr. Forbes was the Technical Director of the Aircrew Crisis Task Force examining the data, modeling, and analytics to remedy the urgent need for pilots in our US Air Force. In this capacity drove the use of leading edge machine learning, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence to improve
production and increase retention in our rated community. He also is responsible to create a nascent organization within HQ USAF Operations (HAF/A3X) dedicated solely to organize, prioritize, and manage the Operations Enterprise’s Data Analytics and System Integration. In that capacity he also serves as the Functional CIO & CDO for the Operations Enterprise for the USAF.
Mr. Forbes is a Fellow candidate in Management Information Systems (Data Science) at Harvard University

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