Marcus Thornton

State Leadership of the Year

Marcus Thornton is the deputy chief data officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Thornton has worked in software engineering for the last 20 years. Thornton previously worked for a data company that specializes in the collection of retail pricing data across North America. As Virginia’s deputy CDO, Thornton serves as the chief operating officer to the chief data officer and the CDO’s technical adviser. He creates new partnerships between the Office of Data Governance and Analytics and other agencies, educating them on how sharing data can inform policy decisions and increase efficiency.