Science Applications International Corporation, Inc. (SAIC) is a premier Fortune 500 technology integrator that provides systems integration, engineering, and IT solutions to defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies. At its helm is a five-time Wash100 Award winner, CEO Nazzic Keene, who has led the company since August 2019. She joined SAIC in 2012 and previously held other executive positions with the company, including chief operating officer, president of the company’s global markets & missions division, and senior vice president for corporate strategy.
Keene was born in Tripoli, Libya, and was brought to the United States with her sisters by her mother, who anticipated the 1969 coup d’état during the North African revolution, and wanted to provide a better life for her daughters. Keene’s mother was a native of Arizona, which is where her father had come to pursue his degree, and the remaining family settled there after moving back. Coming from modest means, Keene stayed in Arizona and attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, studying what was then a new field called management information systems.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in 1984, Keene moved to Dallas and joined Electronic Data Systems. She spent the remainder of the 1980s learning about the ever-changing world of IT and about business and profit and loss. She left EDS in 1996, acted briefly as a partner with Ernst and Young’s consulting practice, and then as chief information officer at a telecom startup. She then joined American Management Systems, rising to senior vice president and managing executive director until her transition to CGI, an IT company, through acquisition in 2004.
Keene stayed with CGI until 2012, when she left to join SAIC to help drive the company’s year-long split into two companies, SAIC and Leidos. The risks she took along the way paid off, and after rising through the ranks she was named CEO in 2019.
For Keene, though, it was never about the title or status.
“It was always about, for me, the ability to make an impact, the ability to help transform, change, grow, regardless of what the title was,” she said in an interview with WashingtonExec. “So that to me is the most intriguing part of whatever role I’ve been in.”