G. Nagesh Rao

Deputy Director

G. Nagesh Rao serves as Deputy Director of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Before joining NIST, he was Chief Information Officer for the Bureau of Industry and Security, also within the Department of Commerce, Director of Business Technology Solutions (BiTS) at the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of the Chief Information Officer, and Chief Technologist & Entrepreneur in Residence within SBA’s Office of Investment & Innovation.

Over the last 20+ years, Mr. Rao has worked for numerous organizations in the public, private, and not for profit sectors. During his time in the public-sector, he has co-developed federal-wide policy initiatives around spurring small business and technological innovation, as well programmatic endeavors such as i6 Green, Patents for Humanity, USAID’s-SBAR Program, and SBA’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. He also oversaw the revamp and modernization of SBA’s digital platforms, including SBIR.gov and SBA.gov, and led technology direction as part of SBA’s COVID-19 leadership response team, with respect to the agency’s Virtual Command Center, Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan endeavors via the CARES Act. Most recently under Mr. Rao’s leadership, the Bureau of Industry and Security overcame more than 15 years of technical debt and has digitally transformed its mission operations via commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), cloud, and software as a service (SaaS) based solutions and adopting a modern day technology stack standard.

Mr. Rao is a Mirzayan Fellow of The National Academies, an Eisenhower Fellow and a Marshall Memorial Fellow. Among many accolades that he has received over the years, recent prominent ones include the Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman & Hind Rattan awards from the NRI Welfare Society, Fed 100, FedScoop 50, ACT-IAC Collaboration Award, DC Inno 50 on Fire, 2019 White House Gears of Government award and a 2022 U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Award.