NASA Headquarters Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Director, Information Technology and Communications Division (ITCD)

Lester Newell

As the NASA Headquarters CIO, Mr. Newell has more than 30 years of senior Information Technology (IT) technical and program management experience in the Government, Commercial, and International business sectors. He has successfully performed in executive IT positions from Project Manager to Chief Executive Office (CEO) managing large complex organizations to support Government programs, Commercial outsourcing contracts, and International service contracts.

After attending the University of Minnesota, Mr. Newell enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served two tours in Vietnam and was awarded the Purple Heart when wounded in combat action. Upon re-enlistment in the Marine Corps during 1969, Mr. Newell started his Data Processing career. During 1973, Mr. Newell attended Marine Corps Officer Candidate School, at Quantico, VA where he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. After serving as an Infantry Officer at Camp Lejuene, Parris Island, and Okinawa, Japan, he was transferred to Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington D.C., where he performed as an Officer Assignment Branch Systems Analyst and managed the Marine Corps Headquarters Data Center. In late 1986, he was transferred to the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs where he performed as an Operations Officer for J4/J6.

Retiring from the Marine Corps in 1988, Mr. Newell joined I-NET, Inc. a small minority owned IT company located in Bethesda, Maryland. He served as an I-NET Program Manager, and when Wang bought I-NET in 1996, as a Wang Global Division Director of IT services. Altogether, he managed major Government programs with the Navy, Army, Air Force, and commercial IT programs with Halliburton, CVS, Ralcorp, Time Warner, Devereux, New York State Electric and Gas, PHCS (healthcare), Imperial Chemical Industries, and Warner Music Group. His I-NET (Wang Global) tenure consisted of overseeing 20 prime contracts, 10 subcontracts, staffed with nearly 1000 employees, and valued at 1 billion dollars.

When 9/11 occurred, Mr. Newell left the commercial sector to join the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). At TSA, he managed a major program to merge Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) security IT resources into TSA and performed as the Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative (COTR) of a major IT contract to build the IT security infrastructure at all United States commercial airports and at TSA Headquarters.

In 2004, Mr. Newell moved to NASA Headquarters where he has served as Branch Chief of the Operations and Engineering Branch in the Information Technology and Communications Division (ITCD) and as COTR of the major IT contract called Information Technology and Systems Engineering Management (ISEM). In early 2007, he assumed the position of Acting Headquarters CIO and Division Director. In January 2008, he was officially selected and currently serves as the NASA Headquarters CIO and Director, Information Technology and Communications Division.