Energy Department taps Twitter, Google alum as CIO
Ross Graber, a Twitter and Google alum, is now the Department of Energy’s chief information officer, sources confirmed to FedScoop.
Graber comes to government after a long career in the private sector, where his experience includes managing Google’s security and privacy technical program for four years and joining Twitter — before it became X — as an information security manager and then a risk and data analytics senior manager, according to his LinkedIn.
Graber spent the past seven months on the board of directors for Double Raven Solutions, a company dedicated to developing tech to help investigate criminal cases. He also worked as a confidential incubator’s investment adviser and finished a four-year stint last month at Procore Technologies as its senior director of security engineering.
Per his LinkedIn profile, Graber “created and scaled a 30+ member security division [at Procure], deploying advanced solutions in application and cloud security while reducing millions of vulnerabilities,” in addition to pioneering “a technical risk management program that improved [National Institute of Standards and Technology] maturity scores and gained executive trust.”
Earlier in his career, Graber worked as a senior adviser at Ernst & Young and as an IT internal audit manager at Yahoo.
Graber’s appointment comes after DOE reinstated former acting CIO Dawn Zimmer to the role after she was temporarily replaced by Ryan Riedel, a SpaceX network engineer.
Riedel was installed at the Energy Department amid reports that Elon Musk’s DOGE had entered the agency and accessed its IT systems. Energy Secretary Chris Wright reportedly granted a DOGE member system access despite objections from legal and IT teams within the agency, who said the individual did not have the appropriate background check.
Zimmer returned after Riedel lasted just one month in the role. She had previously held the interim CIO position following Ann Dunkin’s departure.
Nextgov first reported the news of Graber’s hiring.
