Joanne Isham
Senior Vice President, Washington Operations
Joanne Isham is Senior Vice President of the Washington Operations for L-1 Identity Solutions which includes Federal operations.
Ms. Isham has significant experience in the private sector, as well as decades of experience within various federal government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She was most recently the Chief Operating Officer of High Performance Technologies and prior to that she served as the VP and Deputy General Manager of the $1.3 billion Network Systems unit of BAE Systems.
She also served for five years as the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) where she provided strategic direction, policy and guidance as the second-in-command of one of the principle U.S. intelligence agencies. In this capacity she also advised senior leadership of the Department of Defense, the national intelligence community, and other government agencies, as well as the civilian sector.
Joanne began her career with the CIA and had a distinguished career spanning more than two decades of service within various departments. She spent six years within the Science and Technology directorate, the last two serving as its Deputy Director where she managed the research, development and application of technology to critical intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination issues. Joanne served as the Director of Congressional Affairs for the CIA for 18 months where she oversaw the entire intelligence community’s legislative liaison activities on behalf of the Director of Central Intelligence. She also was the Associate Director for Resources, Community Management Staff, the Director of Corporate Affairs, National Reconnaissance Office, and served as an intelligence staff officer for 12 years.
During her public service career, Joanne was awarded eight distinguished service and performance awards by the CIA and intelligence community. These include the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA Director’s Award and CIA Distinguished Intelligence medal, the defense Distinguished Civilian Service award, the NGA Distinguished Intelligence medal, the DIA Director’s award and the National Medal of achievement.