DISA gets new chief for J6 directorate

A familiar face is now leading the J6 Endpoint Services and Global Service Center at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Sharon Woods, who was serving as director of the J9 Hosting and Compute Center at DISA, was appointed to take the helm of the J6 directorate, according to an announcement on LinkedIn.

She stepped into her new role on Monday.

“We deliver networking and endpoint solutions at all classification levels to the Department of Defense. This is a crucial mission, connecting the Department’s globally dispersed workforce, from the Pentagon to the edge, with unified communications. Incorporating my experience with cloud technology, I hope to drive modernization and propel J6 forward as the premier communications provider to the Department,” Woods said in a post.

Woods has served in key roles as DISA, a combat support agency, has undergone transformation in recent years. She was executive director of the Cloud Computing Program Office, which in 2021 merged with other DISA entities to create the Hosting and Compute Center. Woods then became director of the new organization.

The merger “enabled DISA to emerge as a hybrid cloud solutions provider. Stratus, Vulcan, JWCC, and upcoming DoD Olympus are just a few of the capabilities that J9 Hosting and Compute is delivering to the Department,” she said.

JWCC, or Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, is the Pentagon’s most high-profile enterprise cloud effort. Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were all awarded under the program in December 2022 and will each compete for task orders. The $9 billion initiative replaced the aborted Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program.

Prior to joining DISA, Woods served as general counsel for the Defense Digital Service for more than three years. Before that, she held several roles in the Department of the Navy’s Office of General Counsel, including as associate counsel for the program executive office for enterprise information systems, general counsel for the DOD Healthcare Management System Modernization program and associate counsel for Naval Enterprise Networks, according to her LinkedIn bio.

Jeff Marshall, who served under Woods as DISA’s vice director of the J9 Hosting and Compute Center, is now the acting director of that organization.