Marcus Thornton is the Deputy Chief Data Officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia. He brings 20 plus years of experience in the area of software engineering and application development. He leads the technical operations for the Office of Data Governance and Analytics (ODGA) and serves as its Chief Operating Officer, reporting to the CDO. Prior to serving the Commonwealth, Marcus was Senior Manager of Application Development for Retail Data LLC, a data company focused on competitive pricing metrics and visualizations where he led the software engineering department. Marcus believes technology, innovation, and data continues to be the staple for improving the end-user experience.