Meet Nishita Henry, Deloitte’s federal technology practice leader

As the the federal technology practice leader at Deloitte, Nishita Henry’s job includes advising all cabinet-level federal agencies on becoming more efficient, advising members of Congress and staying up to date in age of automation and cloud computing.

“The cloud has been out there a number of years and the federal government is absolutely embracing it, and really getting them to understand how to manage in a cloud environment is incredibly important,” Henry told Technical.ly DC, adding that blockchain technology and automation through artificial intelligence will revolutionize government efficiency. “ATMs were introduced in the marketplace 25 years ago, and everyone was afraid that it would eliminate the number of bank tellers… Automation alleviates the time people spend on [mundane] activities and actually spend time on all the new services that our constituents need, like copying financial information from one spreadsheet or another.”

Henry, who lives in Alexandria with her husband and two daughters, has Master’s degrees from Darden and the University of Virginia, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The daughter of an engineer father and medical technologist mother who emigrated to the U.S. from India in the 1960s, she was pushed to pursue a career that would always be in-demand.

She’s been at her current role at Deloitte for about a year, and previously held the roles of the company’s federal innovation leader and technology strategy and architecture leader.

In these leadership roles, Henry has also become an advocate for women and people of color in technology.

“I’ve always been in the technical field, so it is a very male-dominated field by nature, but I have never felt it has held me back in any way,” she said. “I do believe we have a disparity of the number of women who want to get into science and technology… I’ve attended conferences where I am speaking and I’m the only woman out of 500 people.”

Currently, she leads a team of 3,000 people. Deloitte provides $1.8 billion worth of services and solutions to the federal government, with $750 million of that devoted to technology.

“I love being here, I love being part of the firm, I love there are so many opportunities to reach aspects of government and business,” she said. “Our goal is to be the number one provider to our clients – to bring the best of what’s out there. We are innovating at the core of what we do.”

Henry said that the trick is staying challenged.

“If it’s easy, you’re probably not learning something,” she said. “That’s how you learn and keep growing.”