Leah Arnold, IT manager within NETL’s Laboratory Operations Center, has an extensive career in public service marked by resilience and a knack for embracing new practices and technologies to excel in a rapidly changing work environment.

Arnold has been the supervisor of the Lab’s enterprise applications area since she joined NETL in September 2012. She also held several interim leadership roles over the years, supporting the IT Director and the Cybersecurity team.

Over that time, the Lab’s federal IT staff doubled, and Arnold’s team tripled in size.

Arnold explained that her team’s work is significant on many levels.

“First, risk to NETL is minimized since business knowledge is maintained within federal staff,” she said. “In addition, enterprise business system planning now informs strategic direction on priorities. Lastly, technical debt is reduced, and business needs are being met.” 

“Although NETL’s IT budget is challenged to keep pace with other federal IT spending, IT’s strategic plans and business systems roadmap are now helping NETL leaders and executives make more informed decisions, a dramatic improvement over the last 10 years.”

Arnold grew up in Grafton, West Virginia, famous for the home of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day. She earned her Bachelor of Science majoring in mathematics, with a minor in computer science, in 1989 from Fairmont State College, and earned a Master of Science in mathematics from West Virginia University in 1992.

“My advisor in college encouraged me to take as many computer classes as possible along with my mathematics courses,” Arnold said. “He quite accurately predicted that this is where the jobs would be.”

Before joining the Lab, Arnold worked for the U.S. Census Bureau. Required by the Constitution to be conducted every 10 years, the census has often been referred to the largest peace time effort the nation undertakes, mobilizing half a million workers to collect information from the nation’s citizens. The computer code written by Arnold and her team for this undertaking was employed by more than 500 offices around the country.

“After the 2000 Census, I began looking for my next challenge,” Arnold said. “That led to a short transfer to the FBI to work at the Internet Crime Complaint Center in Fairmont, West Virginia, where I worked on a case management solution for analysts, comparing and compiling complaints for potential investigation.”

“Then, after working on the 2010 Census, it was time for the next challenge. While searching USAJOBS, I came across a branch chief position at NETL, focusing on enterprise applications. I recall thinking, ‘This job was written for me!’”

Looking to the future, Arnold and her team are performing systems migration to strategic enterprise platforms in the cloud and using these strategic platforms to deliver business value for NETL.

For those making their way up in their careers, Arnold’s advice is simple but impactful: Move around a lot.

“Change positions within and across agencies,” she advised. “Diverse experience is critical to continued growth and advancement. Continue to expand your knowledge. Follow Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella’s lead, ‘Be bold and be right. If you’re not bold, you’re not going to do much of anything. If you’re not right, you’re not going to be here.’”

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers technological solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By leveraging its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.