SAIC taps new chief innovation officer, chief of staff

Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) has hired a new chief innovation officer as well as a new chief of staff to incoming CEO Toni Townes-Whitley, the Reston-based Fortune 500 federal contractor announced Thursday.

Lauren Knausenberger, who will oversee the company’s innovation strategy across its solutions and services portfolio as chief innovation officer, comes from the Department of the Air Force, where she was chief information officer. At SAIC, she also will lead the company’s corporate strategy, and the chief technology officer and Innovation Factory teams will answer to her.

Knausenberger was responsible for three Air Force directorates — Enterprise Information Technology, Data and Artificial Intelligence, and Cybersecurity — and led 20,000 cyber operations and support personnel worldwide. Before joining the Air Force, she was founder and president of consulting and venture capital company Accellint, and held executive roles at American Management Systems and CACI International.

Tim Turitto, who will serve as chief of staff for Townes-Whitley when she starts as CEO on Oct. 2, was chief operating officer of Microsoft Federal, Microsoft’s federal government subsidiary.

Turitto spent seven years at Microsoft and was part of the team that was awarded the Department of Defense’s $9 billion JEDI contract in 2019 — although the Pentagon later abandoned the cloud project for a different plan — and led the sales strategy for the company’s $10 billion Global Government business. Earlier, he held positions in sales and operations at CGI Group. Townes-Whitley, who will replace the retiring Nazzic S. Keene, also worked for Microsoft and CGI.

At SAIC, Turitto will also be responsible for leading business enablement, program execution and infrastructure functions.

SAIC employs about 24,000 people and reported $7.7  billion in fiscal 2023 revenue.