Google’s Government Arm Names New Chief

Google’s new business unit geared toward serving federal, state and local governments, as well educational institutions, will soon have a new chief executive officer.

Karen Dahut, who most recently headed Booz Allen Hamilton’s global defense business, will become Google Public Sector’s chief executive officer effective October 31, according to a blog post from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. Dahut oversaw a $4 billion defense portfolio at Booz Allen Hamilton, and Kurian cited her more than two decades of experience in cybersecurity, data science and analytics—as well as her service as an officer in the U.S. Navy—as significant accomplishments.  

“Karen is a highly accomplished executive who has built businesses, developed and executed large-scale growth strategies, and created differentiated solutions across both commercial and federal industries,” Kurian said.

Since Google Public Sector launched in June—the culmination of years of effort the commercial tech giant made learning the ins and outs of public sector business—it has been led by Will Grannis. Effective Oct. 31, Grannis will return to his previous role as chief technology officer of Google Cloud.

Google Public Sector has made inroads in defense business in recent months, capturing several cloud-related contracts with the Pentagon and U.S. Navy. The company is also in the running—along with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Oracle—for the Defense Department’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract. Winners of that contract would ultimately host some of the military’s most important sensitive, classified data in their cloud infrastructures.