Mr. Ethan Cole currently serves as Acting Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Region 7 in Kansas City, Missouri. In this role, he oversees a regional team serving Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. The CISA Region 7 team provides expert advice on physical and cybersecurity risk assessment and mitigation, information sharing and outreach, training and exercises, emergency communications, and infrastructure resilience.
Mr. Cole joined CISA in 2022 and has held various federal leadership positions throughout his career. Prior to joining CISA, he worked at the USDA Farm Production and Conservation Business Center in the Financial Management Division (FMD), where he implemented FMD’s first three Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots, coordinated program delivery for multi-million- and billion-dollar farm programs, and served as Acting Accounting Policy Section Chief.
From 2012 through 2020, Mr. Cole served with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the National Records Center (NRC) in leadership roles including Administrative Manager, Chief of Staff, Deputy Director, and Acting NRC Director. There, he led employees and contractors responsible for managing nearly 18 million classified and unclassified immigration records while also leading the largest Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program in the federal government, ensuring timely access to records for nearly 300 USCIS offices worldwide. While at USCIS, Mr. Cole completed the Federal Executive Institute’s Leadership for a Democratic Society program.
Mr. Cole began his federal career in 2002 as a Federal Career Intern Program (FCIP) Intern with the U.S. Treasury, Financial Management Service (FMS) at the Kansas City Financial Center. Mr. Cole progressed into numerous leadership positions including international payments operations, domestic payments operations, and administrative management functions.
He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Community Recreation with a minor in Business Management from Southwest Baptist University, where he also played collegiate baseball.
