The Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved the appointment of Information Services Director Sharon Stanley to lead the county’s Support Services Agency at their March 10 meeting. The Support Services Agency oversees the county’s Information Services, Property Management, Fleet Management, and Purchasing Departments, as well as the Print Shop, Records Management, and Mail Services. Support Services is also the liaise with the Tax Assessor’s Office.

“It will be difficult to leave my current job, but the group in IS has created an amazing culture of serving Cobb’s residents and they’ll continue doing just that,” Stanley said. “It makes it easier to take this position knowing I’ll still be overseeing Information Services. I loved interacting with different Cobb departments and outside groups, and this new position will allow me to expand that interaction to tackle a variety of projects.”  

Stanley became Information Services Director in 2014, and her time with Cobb County mirrored her successful careers in both the military and the private sector.    

After college, Stanley joined the Navy where she specialized in anti-submarine warfare, earned a Master’s degree in Information Systems from the Naval Postgraduate School, and rose to the commander of the at NAVCOMTELSTA Puget Sound.

After her military career, Stanley held multiple high-profile private sector positions including Sprint where she rose to a Senior Director position overseeing wireless and telecommunications control centers. She later became a senior manager with McKesson, a health care technology company, where she managed 24-hour corporate IT networks and control centers. 

Since she took over Cobb’s IS Department, it has become a leader in IT security and many of her team’s collaborative projects with Cobb Departments have received recognition, including;

• CobbCommute, a traffic website providing mobile access to real-time information about congestion, travel speeds, road closures, and construction projects on the county’s arterial roads won the Georgia Technology Innovation Showcase Award. 
• In 2018, Cobb received a second Innovation Showcase award for use of GIS to enhance government to citizen engagement.  
• Stanley was recognized as the Info-Tech Research Group 2017/2018 CIO Award Winner at the Enterprise level. 
• Most recently, Cobb County Information Services received the Georgia GMIS and the GMIS International Government to Citizen awards for its Smart County Journey Digital Stops Project. 
• Stanley has been featured in several publications including GovLoop.com April 4 article on digital government, Toggle Magazine’s Fall 2017 edition for Cobb County’s journey into “Big League Digital Government” and Cobb inFocus July/August 2019 edition highlighting Cobb’s Women in Technology.   

Stanley lives in Marietta, Ga., and holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Wake Forest University, a Master of Science in Information Systems from the Naval Postgraduate School and a Master of Art in National Security and Strategic Studies from the College of Naval Command and Staff.