Melissa Frederick, The Examiner
2008-05-05 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Formerly the director of technology for the state of Virginia, George Newstrom is now the president and CEO of Fairfax-based Lee Technologies.

What does your company do?

We build, design, maintain and operate data centers, largely for the U.S. government.

What’s driving your growth?

The government is a big purchaser, and because D.C. is very concerned about the security of their infrastructure, they’re moving their data centers outside the “blast zone” into other areas.

Who are some of your industry clients?

We’ve done work for Microsoft, Coca Cola, the Royal Bank of Canada. We’ve got most of the industries covered.

How’d you end up in IT?

I don’t know; I’m a nerd. I used to work for EDS. My last job was running their Asia division, and I lived in Hong Kong. I got a call one night from Mark Warner, who wanted to know if I’d come down to Richmond when he set up his Cabinet.

At that job, what was the most interesting thing you learned?

Shortly after I arrived, I was asked how much we spent on technology, which is a legitimate question for a CEO to ask his IT guy. So I told someone to find out. It took us six months to find out that we spent around $1 billion — the whole state budget was $25 billion. We didn’t know it because we were spending it in 91 different agencies. So we consolidated it all into one data agency, and now private contractors run the data centers.

What’s the biggest issue facing Virginia tech companies right now?

By 2015, about 45 percent of our current IT work force will be gone, and we have a major shortage.

What do you do when you’re not running companies?

My wife and I do charity events. We live in Florida, and I get to go home every two to three weeks and stay there for the weekend.