News: Acquia Appoints Former White House Technology Head, Tom Cochran, as Vice President of Public Sector + other senior hires

WASHINGTON, D.C. – November 28, 2016 – Acquia, the digital experience company, today announced the appointment of Tom Cochran as vice president and chief digital strategist for public sector. Cochran will lead Acquia’s public sector team based in Washington, D.C.

"In my work at the White House and the State Department, I have witnessed the positive impact of open source in government first-hand,” Cochran said. “The opening of government services has made incredible progress in the last eight years, and my focus at Acquia is to help governments at the federal, state, local, as well as international level, to leverage Acquia’s open digital platform. We want agencies to meet their mission, improve efficiencies, and enhance the citizen experience. Given the company's history of working with customers ranging from the City of Boston to the Government of Australia, we have a remarkable story of innovation and leadership driving the open government movement.”

Cochran was most recently a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of State, where he was responsible for the online and offline platforms for U.S. public diplomacy, focusing on data-driven decisions and international audience engagement. Prior to that, Cochran was the director of digital technology at the White House, where he worked on the President's Open Government Directive, leading the team that was responsible for providing a secure, stable, and scalable infrastructure across all White House digital properties. His team was responsible for leading the delivery of the “We the People” online petitioning site that connects people directly with the Executive branch. Cochran has also held leadership roles in the private sector, most recently as the chief technology officer at Atlantic Media, publisher of international news outlets including: The Atlantic, Quartz, Government Executive and National Journal.

“Acquia’s work in the public sector has been a hallmark of its success throughout its nine-year history. Government leads the way with open source and the cloud to transform how citizens engage with institutions from the state to the national level,” said Tom Erickson, Acquia CEO. “Adding Tom Cochran to our public sector team will provide incredible insight and experience to our fast growing and robust public sector business. We are proud to welcome an executive of Tom’s caliber to the team and have him lead the charge to continue making government and citizen services more open and accessible to all.”

Cochran joins Acquia at a time when the company is expanding its public sector capabilities. Earlier this year Acquia was granted an Authority to Operate (ATO) by the U.S. Department of Treasury under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)SM for federal customers using Acquia Cloud Enterprise and Acquia Cloud Site Factory. FedRAMP is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. The FedRAMP ATO further validates Acquia’s leading security, risk, and compliance practices and provides assurance to government agencies that these practices are in place for their cloud properties.

In the past year, Acquia continued adding prominent public sector customers to its portfolio. In July the City of Boston launched the new Boston.gov, a highly useful, visual, and accessible site built with Drupal on the Acquia Platform. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Government of Australia, and the Northern Health Authority join a diverse group of Acquia customers who are leading innovation and reinventing digital in the public sector. Those organizations include the State of New York, City of Los Angeles, FEMA, MTA, the Department of the Treasury and many more.

Read more on Cochran’s take on Open Government and its global potential on the Acquia blog.

About Acquia

Acquia is the leading provider of cloud-based, digital experience management solutions. Forward-thinking organizations rely on Acquia to transform the way they can engage with customers -- in a personal and contextual way, across every device and channel. Acquia provides the agility organizations need to embrace new digital business models and speed innovation and time to market. With Acquia, thousands of customers globally including the BBC, Cisco, Stanford University, and the Australian Government are delivering digital experiences with transformational business impact.