IonQ Names Ex-DoW Leader Katie Arrington as CIO, Promotes Kershaw to CISO
IonQ will appoint national security leader Katie Arrington as Chief Information Officer on January 19, 2026, to oversee enterprise systems modernization and supply-chain cybersecurity. IonQ also promoted Leslie Kershaw to Chief Information Security Officer to manage federal and commercial cybersecurity requirements across its expanding quantum computing operations.
1. Robinhood CIO Sees Upside for U.S. GDP in 2026
On Fox Business’s Making Money, Robinhood Chief Investment Officer Stephanie Guild projected that U.S. gross domestic product will be “quite a bit” stronger in 2026 than current consensus estimates. Guild cited robust consumer spending—supported by a 4.1% year-over-year rise in personal incomes through Q3 2025—and sustained hiring across the services sector, which added an average of 200,000 jobs per month in late 2025. She argued that the combination of residual fiscal support, resilient wage growth, and above-trend capital investment in technology should drive real GDP growth north of 3.5% next year, compared with the 2.1% pace analysts currently model. Guild also noted cooling inflationary pressures, with the core personal consumption expenditures index moderating to 2.4% year-over-year in November, as a key enabler of stronger economic performance and higher equity market returns in 2026.
2. IonQ Names Department of War Veteran Katie Arrington CIO
IonQ announced that Katie Arrington, former Department of War Chief Information Officer, will join the quantum computing leader as Chief Information Officer effective January 19, 2026. Reporting to COO and CFO Inder Singh, Arrington will oversee modernization of IonQ’s global enterprise systems, bolster cyber resilience across operations in 12 countries, and secure critical supply-chain and digital assets. Her appointment follows a distinguished 20-year federal career—most recently as Deputy CIO for Cybersecurity—where she led defense-wide cyber governance and developed the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification now standard across defense contractors. Concurrently, Leslie Kershaw will step into an expanded Chief Information Security Officer role, leveraging nearly two decades of cyber leadership, including her tenure as Cyber Technical Director for U.S. Space Force’s Space DELTA 6. IonQ chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi emphasized that Arrington’s expertise in national-security technology and Kershaw’s operational security acumen will support the company’s rollout of its next-generation IonQ Tempo systems, which in 2025 achieved a record 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity and delivered 20x performance gains for partners such as AWS and NVIDIA.