Rising Star: Stephen Ander

Stephen Ander

Age: 29

Organization: Gallup

Title: Senior Consultant

Nominated for: Developing a modular plan for a more comprehensive hiring approach for mission-critical positions at the U.S. Secret Service in his former position as special adviser to the director.

First IT mentor: Greg Brazzle, who taught me the essential lesson of divorcing the data and application layers.

What you're most proud of accomplishing on the job: Bettering the business of government to improve on mission delivery and better serve the taxpayer.

Career highlight: Creating a 10-foot-long process map of the U.S. Secret Service hiring process, analyzing costs and times to hire, and building internal buy-in to start agile and modular application development to improve the process.

Your advice for a government IT wannabe: Build expertise in data. Applications come and go, but data is forever.

What you enjoy most about working in government IT: Along with overall human capital and finance, IT is one of three pillars to improve government writ large, but it’s the one with the most innovation and potential to make change happen.

Favorite job-related bookmarks/apps: FedScope, FedBizOpps, Dorobek Insider

Meet the rest of the 2012 Rising Star winners.