Maria Roat
Chief Information Officer, U.S. Small Business Administration
When Maria Roat took the position of CIO of the Small Business Administration in October 2016, she stepped in to fill a position left vacant for over a year. Since then she has focused on pushing modernization, building her team and building an office culture that embraces experimentation. Her motto, she told a House Small Business Committee hearing in July, is “Turn it on. Let’s try it.” Roat said she hasn’t dwelled too much on the role that her gender has played in her long career in government IT. “I never viewed myself as a woman in the workforce — I was a person who had a job to do and I had to pull my weight just like everybody else. I’ve not viewed myself as different form the men … although I do recognize that women bring different things to the table.”
