Chris Carlson

Chris Carlson is the Founder and CEO of Retriever Consulting LLC where he helps clients create an innovation environment that allows for rapid mission and business transformation. He uses a realistic approach of strategy, design, and process improvement to effectively introduce, leverage, and optimize cloud computing, mobility, and Web 2.0 information technologies. Chris draws upon his nearly 30 years’ experience in delivering business and mission outcomes around the world to lead this customer focused team. As a leading advocate for cloud computing, he has worked with the vendor community to identify and support best practices, education, readiness, security and standards across the federal government. He has participated in government wide seminars and forums as well as consultative conferences with federal agencies and the private sector in the areas of governance, security, standards and best practices and has authored articles and papers in these areas.

Prior to forming Retriever Consulting Chris was the first Cloud Computing Solutions Architect in the IBM Federal organization. In this role he was responsible for helping US federal government clients through the lifecycle of cloud computing and represented the entire IBM portfolio of services, software, and systems. He was responsible for ensuring IBM delivered solutions that meet the needs of the federal customer and that his customers were achieving mission and business impact with their solutions. Chris was part of the IBM Global Defense Team, assisting in developing reference architectures and operational best practices in addition to presenting at conferences and meeting with key defense clients around the world. He was the government standards technology lead for more than five years for the Tivoli Software brand. As the technical manager for Tivoli Software in the US federal market, Chris was responsible for customer excellence in management of their information technology infrastructure: data center operations, telecommunications network management, identity and access management, security operations, and enterprise storage management.

Chris came to IBM through the acquisition of Micromuse, a leading telecommunications network management provider, in 2006, where he served more than six years in customer facing technical management roles. His commercial customers represented the service provider sector, the aviation sector, and the financial services sector. His public sector experience includes state and local governments, US federal civilian and intelligence agencies, the US Department of Defense, the US Joint Forces Command, NATO, and a number of foreign Ministries of Defense. Before joining Micromuse, Chris was responsible for applications development and systems integration at several small companies. Chris served on active duty in the US Army for 11 years as an Infantry Officer, with roles in staff and leadership positions.

Chris holds a Master of Arts in Arab Studies and International Business from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In addition to skills in business, leadership and technology, Chris has exceptional linguistic aptitude with strong abilities in Modern Standard Arabic. Chris is active in his community, serving in philanthropic and community service roles.