Jim Cook serves as ACT-IAC's Strategy and Engagement Executive, advising and supporting our efforts to implement our Strategic Plan, enhance government engagement and value. He also serves as Chair for the Institute for Innovation where he is leading the rollout of a new 3-year strategy. In this role, he supports the ACT-IAC staff on our strategic interactions with executive agency leaders, coordinates engagements with Congress and the policy community, and supports new strategic collaborations with member companies, academia, non-profit associations and foundations and other stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem.
Previously, Cook was vice president for Strategic Engagement and Partnerships at the MITRE Corporation. In this role, he led MITRE’s strategic corporate partnership interactions with the executive agencies and Congress and promoted development of new strategic partnerships with the private sector, academia, and other non-profit, associations and foundations to address public interest challenges at the federal, state, and municipal levels.
Prior to that role, he also served as vice president and director of the Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM), a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Department of the and co-sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). In that capacity, Cook led MITRE's support of modernization efforts for civilian government agencies.
Over the past 40 years, his private sector experience in governance, organization change, and program and systems integration; coupled with his work developing and applying information technology to the missions of federal, state, and international agencies, has given him firsthand experience with the challenges associated with technology modernization and IT-driven business transformation. As an advocate for better government, and his passion for serving the public interest, he has spent his career helping to advance improvements in civilian agency performance, acquisition, and workforce reform. He has also been an advocate for opportunities for people with disabilities, currently serving on the Board of Directors for Melwood and being a champion for more employment opportunities in the government workforce for neurodistinct individuals.
He was previously a partner and executive with IBM Business Consulting and a consulting partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he led account teams in Treasury and Financial Services. In 1997, Cook became one of a handful of people from industry to receive the IRS Commissioner's Award for his leadership in helping modernize the agency’s tax administration business processes and systems.
In 2007, he received Federal Computer Week’s FED 100 award, given to the top 100 executives in government IT, for his leadership role assisting the IRS in developing and launching a new modernization plan and governance structure which ultimately resulted in the IRS being removed from the GAO High Risk list. He also received FED 100 awards in 2014 and 2019 for his efforts to harness innovation to help federal agencies transform their missions.
He received his bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Maryland.