Sonny Bhagowalia
Assistant Commissioner, Office of Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Mr. Sanjeev “Sonny” Bhagowalia is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Assistant Commissioner for CBP’s Office of Information and Technology. Mr. Bhagowalia has over 37 years of proven, award-winning experience, which include 14 years of senior technical management experience in the Boeing Company and 23+ years of CIO/CXO executive leadership experience in U.S. Federal/State Government at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of the Interior, General Services Administration (running Office of Management and Budget/White House programs), State of Hawaii, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and currently CBP, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Bhagowalia has received numerous awards from the U.S. Government and Industry, including a Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive Service; three Federal 100 Awards; Government CIO of the Year; Golden Gov Executive of the Year (twice); Best Bosses in Federal IT (twice); and White House Champion of Change. His team won the Chief Information Officer 100 award for data.gov and “Best of the Web” State Portal award from the Center for Digital Government for Hawaii.gov. He was inducted into the Boeing Technical Excellence Fellowship Program, recognizing the top one percent of engineers and scientists in the Boeing Company; the 2015 National Defense University Information Resources Management (IRM) College Hall of Fame; and 2014 Federal Enterprise Architecture Certification Institute Hall of Fame.
Mr. Bhagowalia has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering (EE); a Master of Science (MS) Degree in EE from Louisiana State University; and an MS in IRM from Syracuse University. He is also a twice-distinguished graduate from the National Defense University, with an IRM Diploma and Federal CIO Certificate.