Jonathan McDonald

Executive Vice President, U.S. Public Sector, TransUnion

Jonathan McDonald reoriented the focus of TransUnion’s public sector business to aid government agencies through highly effective commercial solutions and services — as the pandemic required the government to work to become more accessible and apply greater security to programs. 

“We’ve improved public-private partnerships, enhanced U.S. national security posture and challenged the marketplace, resulting in faster innovation and lower costs to the government,” he said. 

Last fall, the Labor Department awarded TransUnion a 5-year, $1.2 billion blanket purchase agreement to help state unemployment insurance systems improve identity verification and strengthen fraud detection.

“When I was TransUnion’s President of U.S. Markets in 2014, I hired Jonathan to build our Public Sector business unit leveraging a customer-centric approach,” said Chris Cartwright, president and CEO of TransUnion. “Prior to Jonathan’s arrival, our interactions with the government were episodic at best; we only interacted when a government customer reached out to us. Under Jonathan’s leadership, TransUnion now has a well-structured business unit focused solely on helping government customers at the federal, state and local levels.”

Why Watch

In 2022, TransUnion will focus on integrating its recent Neustar and Sontiq acquisitions, which advance the strategy to diversify from core credit solutions with complementary digital marketing and fraud mitigation capabilities.

“Seven years ago, we were a small yet aggressive team with deep industry experience who would meet at restaurants and hotel conference rooms to brainstorm how we could best take our unique and highly valuable capabilities to the public sector,” McDonald recalled.

“Now we’ve grown to 55-plus associates, established strategic partnerships with numerous agencies, and are one of the fastest growing businesses at TransUnion. I am excited to lead our continued growth and success as we strive to be a go-to partner who makes trust possible for public sector agencies and their constituents.”