Joan Dempsey is a Senior Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton where she leads the firm’s defense business for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the defense agencies, and the Unified Commands. Previously, she led the firm’s largest intelligence account.
During a 25-year career in the federal government, Joan held political appointments twice: first, in President Bill Clinton’s Administration upon Senate Confirmation, she served as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management; and, in President George W. Bush’s Administration, as the Executive Director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Joan also spent 17 years as a senior civilian in the Department of Defense (DoD) as Deputy Director of Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and as the designated (acting) Assistant Secretary of Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence. She led major Pentagon budget staffs during the budget build-up in the 1980s and during the defense reductions of the 1990s and helped shaped budget strategy and execution in both decades. In 1997, she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award by DoD Secretary William J. Perry for her work on the Bottom Up Review and the first Defense Quadrennial Review. Joan began her federal civilian service in 1983 as a DoD Presidential Management Intern. She also served for 25 years as a naval reserve intelligence officer and was on active duty as a US Navy cryptologic technician.
Joan was the 2004 recipient of the Security Affairs Support Association William O. Baker Award, an honor she shares with two former Secretaries of Defense, a United States Senator, and two former Directors of Central Intelligence. In addition to the DoD Distinguished Civilian Service Award, she is a recipient of the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, and The American University Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership.
She also was granted an honorary doctorate in 2004 from the Joint Military Intelligence College. Joan is a member of the board of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, the National Security Agency (NSA) Cryptologic Museum, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Officers Memorial Foundation.
A Special Advisor to the US Strategic Command, Joan chairs the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Panel of the Command’s Strategic Advisory Committee. In 2010, Joan was appointed as a panel member for the Congressionally-directed Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel.
profile updated December 2011
