SUSAN PENFIELD, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
As chief innovation officer at the nearly 27,000-person technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Penfield oversees all of the company’s next-generation technology advising for both commercial and government clients, giving them ways to use new advances to more efficiently run their operations. This has given her a unique perspective on the technology revolution over the 25 years she’s been at the company, where she’s gone from transitioning clients from mainframe computing to Windows to focusing on how her clients can use AI and quantum computing. Increasing female representation among her staff and in STEM careers in general has been a priority, and it has led her to create partnerships between Booz Allen Hamilton and local students. “I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do that just inside Booz Allen, but I really had to create the feeder pool for it,” she says.
