When Governor Josh Stein nominated Teena Piccione to run the North Carolina Department of Information Technology in January 2025, he was looking beyond the typical field of government insiders. Piccione had no experience in public office. She had decades of senior technology leadership experience in the private sector, and she didn’t pretend otherwise. Fifteen months later, on the verge of a transition in leadership as she completes her time carved out to serve North Carolina as NCDIT Secretary and state CIO, the state has replayed its answer, giving her one of North Carolina’s highest honors, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.
Who Is Teena Piccione? The Executive Who Swapped Silicon Valley for Raleigh
Piccione, a first-generation high school and college graduate whose career was one of the more eclectic American technology leadership paths. She worked for 18 years at AT&T in various positions, including head of the company’s Big Data Center of Excellence, an internal start-up. She then went to Fidelity Investments, where she was SVP and COO with a focus on modernization and customer experience, followed by a stint as EVP and CIO at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute.
She joined Google in 2020 as Managing Director for Cloud & Customer Engineering, where she worked across Telecommunications, Media, Entertainment & Gaming. She graduated from Georgia State University and received a master’s degree from The George Washington University. During her more than 25-year career, she earned awards such as IT Women to Watch in STEM and Top 50 CIO in the USA, and had a feature in Women to Watch by Diversity Journal.
But none of that was a government job. When Governor Stein tapped her for his Cabinet in December 2024 and she took office there the following January, it was Piccione’s first time doing work inside a public-sector agency. She was confirmed by the North Carolina State Senate in May 2025.
"We are moving at the speed of business, not government, to do things differently and make them faster and better." — Teena Piccione, NCDIT Secretary & State CIO
What Teena Piccione Built in Her 15 Months as North Carolina State CIO
Piсcione came armed with a disciplined framework: treat North Carolina’s tech infrastructure like the sort of competitive liability that would be taken seriously by a business. During her tenure as North Carolina State CIO, she had four priorities — cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, IT procurement reform and workforce development.
On cybersecurity, she lobbied to optimize the state’s posture across agencies, a focus Governor Stein mentioned when praising her exit. On A.I., she pinpointed use cases in procurement, fraud detection and agency operations, and put a lot of energy into educating state employees about what the technology could do for them, trying to replace fear with practical knowledge.
Procurement reform was another pillar. Under Piccione, NCDIT sought to expedite the slow-moving processes of government IT buying, introducing a private-sector pace to a part of business that hasn’t necessarily been known for moving fast. Nate Denny, the incoming Secretary, specifically named continuing her procurement work as a priority on taking office.
One of the initiatives closest to Piccione personally was workforce development. The first in her family to complete both high school and college, she knew what closed doors look like. She changed that when she learned, for example, that North Carolina’s unfilled state IT positions listed requirements like 15 years of experience, virtually barring every recent graduate from applying. All open IT positions were made available to junior applicants. She also initiated a cybersecurity internship program to attract college students into state government, providing a path from intern to apprentice and then full-time employee.
She also argued for broadband access and affordability, treating connectivity like an opportunity issue as much as an infrastructure one, her department oversaw active upgrades to the state’s DMV systems, tax platform and HR infrastructure throughout her tenure.
The Order of the Long Leaf Pine: What the Award Actually Means
Normal protocol for Order of the Long Leaf Pine isn't given out regularly. It is one of the most distinguished awards bestowed by a North Carolina governor, reserved for individuals who have shown exceptional service to the state, whether through their professional achievements or impact in their communities or both. Awardees are officially given the title of North Carolina Ambassador Extraordinary.
The honor comes with one unique privilege: the right to suggest the official North Carolina Toast at formal events. Here’s what that toast reads, which Piccione quoted as she announced her leaving:
"Here's to the land of the long leaf pine, the summer land where the sun doth shine, where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great, here's to down home, the Old North State."
For someone who entered state government as an outsider and spent 15 months doing work she said mattered deeply for people who might never know it happened, closing her tenure with those words carries its own kind of weight.
Governor Stein's Statement and What Comes Next for NCDIT
Governor Stein described Piccione as a changemaker and said her time serving North Carolina was impactful, words that, from a governor, hit closer to high praise than mere political openers. She announced her departure in late March 2026, effective April 6.
Nate Denny, the person taking over as NCDIT Secretary is no stranger to the department. Denny previously served for three years at the NCDIT Deputy Secretary level, running the state’s broadband expansion. Before that, he was Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. General Services Administration, where he worked across procurement, economic development, government real estate and technology. He has stated publicly that he plans to focus on continuing Piccione’s work addressing IT modernization and procurement reform.
As for Piccione herself, her LinkedIn page verified she has now joined Michael Baker International , an engineering and consulting firm, ‘to help drive the next phase of growth for the company.’ She is headed back to the private sector, where she spent most of her career.
Final Thoughts
Teena Piccione’s tenure as North Carolina State CIO was never going to be permanent, she said so from day one, and the speed at which she worked made certain that everyone knew she was treating 15 months as a full deployment, not a warmup. She changed the way the state hires IT talent, moving cybersecurity and AI from buzzwords to active priorities, and applied a discipline to government technology that the department had rarely seen from outside.
The Order of the Long Leaf Pine is awarded to individuals who have a significant impact on North Carolina, worthy of recognition through their life’s work. Whether the reforms she set in motion will survive the transition, whether they can scale up under Nate Denny’s stewardship and see their way towards really landing for North Carolinians who are counting on them, that’s the real measure of what those 15 months were worth. Early signs are that she did indeed leave her department pointed squarely in the right direction.
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