Managing

Dara Sewell heads up digital forensics at the FBI

She thought she'd fulfilled her dream when she joined the FBI after seventeen years in industry. Now she's overseeing the work of 250 forensic examiners

The FBI's Dara Sewell: "I knew that I could help at the leadership level."

"I would never have dreamed that I would be where I am in the time I've been here at the bureau," says Dara Sewell.

Early this year, Sewell became unit chief for the digital evidence forensics unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, Washington, DC). She supervises the work of forensic examiners in all FBI divisions throughout the U.S., working out of two offices, one at FBI HQ (Washington, DC) and the other at the FBI engineering research facility (Quantico, VA).

Every year the FBI conducts more than a million examinations, from fingerprints to tire-tread analysis. It also helps train state and local forensic labs in new methodologies.

IT is big
Criminals who think they've covered their electronic tracks find themselves exposed by Sewell and her staff of digital forensic examiners. The FBI examiners work with all the electronic media they can get: PCs with Windows or Linux OS, Macs, media sticks, CDs, diskettes, PDAs, hard drives and thumb drives. "We encounter all these devices," says Sewell.

The examiners preserve the information, extract it in a form that investigators can use, and provide expert testimony in court. They also go to the scene of investigations to collect evidence.

Special agent Sewell
Sewell joined the FBI as a special agent in 1996, with the idea of working her way into the technical area. At the time, she was under the entry age limit by only six months. "I knew that there would be no other time for me to take the job," she says.

And she wanted the job. "I wanted the minority community to recognize that some options are available that are not readily known to us," she says.

Training
The sixteen-week training process was physically challenging, but she was well prepared professionally. She had a 1992 dual degree in EE and ME from the University of Maryland. She had been working on it ever since she graduated from high school in 1976.

A couple of years after high school she started work at the defense division of Westinghouse in Linthicum, MD, near Baltimore-Washington International airport. "I enjoyed the idea of working with digital technology," she says. She stayed there seventeen years.

Most of her work at Westinghouse was electrical - digital-related jobs like laying out circuit boards and designing test boxes. She worked on radar systems including F16, B1B and AWACS. Eventually she was managing production of transmitters for the F16 radar.

On to the FBI
She might have stayed there forever, but when downsizing threatened in 1995, it was time to move on. A friend from church told her about the FBI and she decided to try for it.

As a new special agent, she was assigned to an office in West Virginia. Then in 1998 she moved to Pittsburgh and got involved with the federally funded Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), working at the team's HQ at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University. She worked on computer-
related investigations as well as digital forensic examinations in which she
actually processed digital media.

Into management
Her next post brought her to Washington, DC HQ as a supervisory special agent of the FBI Computer Analysis Response Team. "I knew there were things within the digital evidence community that I could help with at the leadership level," she says.
This spring, she took on forensics responsibility for the entire U.S.

Networking
As part of her job, Sewell networks with other national and international technical groups to keep current on issues in the digital evidence community. "Computers go across all boundaries," she notes.

Her husband, she says, is her main inspiration and mentor. His experience as a police officer connected her to the law enforcement community. While she was starting out with the FBI, his career took him into the government sector, where he now works for the Alexandria federal courts.

Sewell hasn't seen many African American women in her line of work. But she's hoping for change. "I can make a difference," she says. "I can make minorities aware of the opportunities here, and help to make things better."

D/C

- Kate Colborn & Christine Willard