Nikki Collier
Deputy Assistant Attorney General/
Chief Information Officer
U.S. Department of Justice
Dr. Shantrell Nikki Collier is the Deputy Assistant Attorney General/Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ or Department). She also serves as the Department’s Chief Data Officer, Chief Digital Experience Officer, Senior Accountable Point of Contact for Federal Shared Services, Senior Agency Official for Geospatial Information, and Service Delivery Lead. Her breadth of leadership experience spans national-level communications, military cybersecurity operations, and Federal information technology (IT) and operational technology modernization. Dr. Collier has a reputation for driving high-tempo and geographically dispersed transformational initiatives, cultivating a culture of excellence and accountability, safeguarding mission continuity, and delivering technology at enterprise scale. Her strategic vision is focused on aligning DOJ’s multi-billion-dollar technology investments to mission-enabling capabilities for 38 organizational Components and nearly 150,000 users leveraging emerging and advanced technologies—reducing unnecessary complexity and duplicative IT and business services. In less than 18-months, she impacted the savings of more than $240 million across the agency and the transition, or decommission, of legacy or unused telecommunications, networking, and IT infrastructure services. In a previous role, Dr. Collier led a major DOJ cloud transformation that consolidated disparate email and collaboration platforms into a cloud-based environment, eliminating 70% of the on-premises email infrastructure and redundancy, and strengthening Federal-wide interoperability and operational efficiency. In 2017, she was honored by the Women in Technology as the recipient of the Unsung Hero Leadership Award for this effort.
Dr. Collier’s Federal leadership career includes serving as the Assistant Chief Information Officer and Director of the Marine and Aviation Cyber Center within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office of Marine and Aviation Operations. She improved the operational performance for 15 NOAA research and survey vessels, 10 specialized research and operational aircraft, uncrewed systems, and land-based facilities; her team architected a more secure, and modernized shipboard network utilizing Low Earth Orbit satellites—increasing data transfer speeds for uninterrupted access to digital services; and spearheaded NOAA’s adoption of the Defense Health Agency’s electronic health records system across seven sites transitioning 700+ NOAA Corps Officers from a fragmentation paper-based clinical processes advancing the continuity of care and improving the portability of health information.
A lifelong leader, Dr. Collier served in the U.S. Army, where she had a distinguished assignment with the White House Communications Agency. She directed cross-functional programmatic, IT, and security teams in planning and executing over 630 multi-year, worldwide Presidential, Vice
Presidential, and First Lady communications missions. In 2013, Dr. Collier was inducted into the White House Communication Agency’s Hall of Fame.
Dr. Collier holds a Doctor of Business Administration and a Master of Science in Information Technology Management with a concentration in digital forensics.