Former VA CIO joins Grant Thornton

LaVerne Council, the former CIO and assistant secretary for the Office of Information and Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs, has joined Grant Thornton as the firm's managing principal for Enterprise Digital Strategy and Innovation.

Council served as VA CIO from mid-2015 through the end of the Obama administration, tackling a wide range of IT management challenges at the agency and generally pushing for greater adoption of commercial services.  She worked briefly this year as a senior vice president and general manager at Mitre Corp., and her pregovernment career included a stint as corporate vice president and global CIO at Johnson & Johnson.

At Grant Thornton, Council will focus on helping client CIOs with IT strategy and challenges, the firm said in a Dec. 7 announcement.  She will be based in the Washington, D.C., area.

Srikant Sastry, Grant Thornton's national managing principal of advisory services, said Council's "passion for using technology and innovation to solve the issues that CIOs face will be integral in expanding the firm’s advisory services offerings."