Catherine Pennington is Portfolio Director for National Geospatial Intelligence Programs at the MITRE Corporation in McLean, VA.  She is responsible for technical, financial, and operational oversight and direction to MITRE’s 150+ staff-year program supporting the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.  Her principal focus is delivery of pre-acquisition concepts, prototypes and emergent solutions based on alignment of R&D and direct work program with agency priorities and operational need, addressing the most critical problems facing NGA and the Intelligence Community.  She coordinates outreach and linkages across government stakeholders, FFRDCs, and industry to collaboratively define the art of the possible and to mature emerging concepts through operational demonstration and transition to the enterprise.

Prior to this assignment Ms. Pennington was Associate Executive Director for Joint and Multi-National C3 Programs at MITRE, responsible for defining and guiding a 130+ staff year program portfolio supporting the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).  Working directly with the DISA CTO, CIO, and Component Acquisition Executive (CAE), she established strategic direction for MITRE and provided technical review and advice to agency seniors, focusing on achieving transformational goals of net-centricity, end-to-end interoperability, and successful deployment of large-scale joint IT network, computing, and service-oriented capabilities. She also developed and taught graduate-level Enterprise System Engineering courses for the the Johns Hopkins University M.S. program in System Engineering taught at MITRE.

Previously, Ms. Pennington established and managed the Enterprise-Wide Services Department at MITRE to provide a comprehensive set of technical capabilities devoted to the definition, deployment, and management of enterprise services.  She provided leadership, vision and direction for the development of technical solutions and prototypes for distributed, enterprise-wide information systems and telecommunications services, including enterprise directories, messaging services, security services, and network, system and applications management solutions.  She guided development of national and international standards, provided system architecture and design guidance, and performed system integration and implementation planning. 

Prior to joining MITRE, Ms. Pennington held management and technical positions in government and private industry.  She holds an M.S. degree in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University, and a B.S. from the University of Maryland.  She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers, Johns Hopkins University Engineering Alumni, and Women in Technology International.