Employee Spotlight

John McCarthy

Senior Security Manager

Making an Impact at National Science Foundation

“Outstanding and impressive” are always great accolades to hear about your job performance, but even better when you’ve only been on the job for a few weeks.

That’s the enviable position in which John McCarthy finds himself. He works with the team at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The voice of confidence came from Andrea Norris, who is Division Director and CIO at NSF. She lauded the “security roadmap” that John and the team at NSF created. The roadmap is basically a presentation for NSF’s senior management and team leaders that briefs them on the organization’s overall security picture.

“They wanted us to articulate threats, identify the consequent risks to the Foundation, and provide a mitigation strategy,” John says. “It’s an IT-focused project that’s been a group exercise.”

Next up on the NSF agenda is to develop a project plan that will integrate the security and operation teams, including an assessment of resources—what’s available and what’s needed.

John is a senior security manager, and works with the Catapult team at NSF. In his short time at NSF with Catapult, he has found Catapult to be a fun place to work, “because everyone is easy to work with.”

The Toronto native grew up in Winnipeg and moved to the DC area in January 2008. He and his wife Alice settled in Reston, VA.

One daughter still lives in Canada, while the other lives in Minnesota.

John and Alice enjoy Reston’s walking and riding trails, and take advantage of them as often as possible.

And while he takes the train to the office, he enjoys his “mid-life crisis” purchase—a candy apple red convertible. It may be an older model used car, but it still provides the kick John needs to keep having fun, whether he’s zipping around Reston or thinking about the next project at NSF.