Anil Cheriyan

Driving change in the federal government isn’t easy, Anil Cheriyan admits. Influencing others to drive transformation in such a bureaucratic environment comes with a wealth of challenges, but that hasn’t stopped Cheriyan and his Technology Transformation Services team from attempting to do so. “This is not a place where you can drive by diktat — you can’t be saying, ‘thou shall do this,’ and therefore everyone’s going to transform. It’s really about influence and making that happen,” he said. Describing the importance of leadership, Cheriyan explained it “is not something that you can have by appointment — you build and grow followership, and good leaders are ones who earn followership.” Cheriyan has experience as such a leader in both government and private industry — as the director of TTS for the past year-and-a-half and as a longtime CIO of Suntrust before that.