Ms. Angela Cough Special Assistant to the CDAO, Digital Talent Management

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Ms. Cough currently serves as Special Advisor to the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO). In this role, she enables innovation as Chief of the Digital Talent Management team, which leads, oversees, supports, guides and educates the Department of Defense data, analytics, and AI workforce. Previously to her current role, she led the CDAO’s AI and Data Accelerator Initiative (ADA), working with a group of digital experts and colleagues at the Pentagon and across the globe, improving upon the robust capabilities deployed across the Department and facilitating learning across the data aggregation, engineering, and digital fields to broaden digital and data literacy and deploy additional capabilities and tooling to support self-service as defined by the user base.

Prior to her work with the CDAO, Ms. Cough was the Deputy Director of Defense Digital Services (DDS), working closely with the Director and the Digital Services portfolio to execute on mission objectives across the DoD. Prior to entering the Deputy role for DDS in February 2022, Ms. Cough was the portfolio manager for Counter-small Unmanned Product Development and served as a Product Manager on key C-sUAS products developed for sensing and visualization. In this role, Ms. Cough worked closely with the Joint-small Counter Unmanned Executive Agency under the Army. She also contributed toward NATO C-sUAS Working Group policy and doctrine development, test and development exercises and as a subject matter expert for development of capability that adheres to modern principles of design.

Ms. Cough spent over 6 years as the Director of Human Resources and Operations at Redfin Corporation, an online residential real estate brokerage. As the 22nd employee of that start-up, she established foundational systems, processes and culture in support of hiring 950 employees, expansion from 1 to 18 markets nation-wide and created streamlined and efficient processes and systems to support employee data and recruiting efforts, and was integral to developing the corporate culture, hiring practices, values, HR function, accounting and HR systems, equity structure, training practices, and corporate policy

Outside of the Department of Defense, Ms. Cough has over 20 years of experience in the small business world, as an owner and investor in various successful coffee houses, bakeries, and bars along with providing seed-funding for several early-stage startups. Earlier in her career, she also launched a business supporting small local companies, including technology start-ups, clothing boutiques, law firms, and restaurants with accounting and other business needs. Ms. Cough holds a black belt in the Martial Art of Tang Soo with the World Tang Soo Do Association and is learning how to fly in her spare time.