Nick M. Murray

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If you asked Nick Murray what his life plan was in college, fostering a stronger and smarter government IT environment would not have been on his list.

While at Emory University, he planned to put his political science degree to work on Capitol Hill and eventually go to law school. But after a brief and disappointing internship on the Hill, a friend suggested that Murray apply for an analyst job at SRA International.

He hasn’t looked back. The die-hard Washington Nationals fan quickly rose through the ranks at SRA, and for two-and-a-half years, he’s been wowing his coworkers.

In the past year, he has helped incorporate Splunk technologies into complex architectures across the federal government, and he spearheaded an effort to lend Splunk’s support for the government’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program.

“[Murray’s] efforts led to Splunk being selected as the standard for CDM data integration for all 23 of the largest civilian departments and agencies across government,” said Kevin Davis, vice president of the public sector at Splunk.

In addition, Murray oversaw Splunk’s accreditation under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program for cloud providers.

“The minute Nick joined the team he had a vision on how to successfully execute the extraordinary challenge of working with the government, systems integrators and technology partners to build a complex data integration Splunk architecture for CDM,” said Chaz Hazzan, an area vice president at Splunk. “What has most impressed me about Nick is how tirelessly he worked to turn that vision into reality. Even when facing some major setbacks, he was dogged, and it was in those moments [that] he redoubled his efforts and was able to reposition and pivot to ensure success.”