My background includes service as an Army Infantry Officer, with The Old Guard in Washington D.C., as a White House Social Aide, and as company commander at Fort Hood. After 9/11, my responsibilities changed. I was looking for another way to serve the nation that directly impacted the Global War on Terror. My former commander had worked at Booz Allen and suggested I interview with leaders of the firm’s security market supporting the intelligence community. Many former military worked at the firm, and that made it an easy transition.
My managers have always encouraged me to grow my career, especially with the firm’s smart power investment, which integrates the firm’s defense, diplomacy, and development capabilities to address our clients’ needs. Senior Associate Cheryl Steele and I had worked on a large proposal involving smart power concepts that required reaching across virtually every team in the firm. From that project, we combined smart power lessons learned and our broad base of internal contacts to establish Booz Allen’s Smart Power Community of Interest, which received a sizable investment from senior leadership. The community integrates many of our markets and capabilities to help our clients solve their most complex whole-of-government challenges.
My role is constantly evolving. I co-lead Booz Allen’s smart power investments and identify processes and technologies to integrate federal defense, diplomacy, and development capabilities. I am one of the firm’s leaders within our Mission Assurance capability area, and a leader within our international market, supporting foreign governments with security and cyber capabilities. Before transitioning to the international market, I led the firm’s U.S. Africa Command business. I’ve shared my views on smart power with media outlets such as Defense News Weekly and Federal News Radio, among others. I’ve also supported our leaders at the Aspen Ideas Festival by demonstrating Booz Allen’s thought leadership on topics such as smart power, cyber security, health, and infrastructure.
Booz Allen is an Ivy League consulting firm. It built its reputation by providing clients with all the services they need for both strategy and implementation. And it’s easy for me to work across markets and teams here—there are minimal barriers to asking for help and requesting the support I need.
I’m helping the firm bring smart power and other capabilities overseas with a focus on governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There’s great interest today in creating smart power concepts within these governments, especially when several MENA countries are restructuring national security. I work with diverse clients in diverse sectors, have been exposed to every market in the firm, and have developed an exceptional network of contacts. This experience benefits my role in supporting the firm’s smart power initiatives, which uses capabilities from all markets. And as a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations and Chairman and Board of Fellows member at the Norwich University School of Social Science, I’m always connecting with people and hearing about new ideas that may be useful for the next project.
Our work makes an impact in ways too numerous to list. Overall, we break down stovepipes between client agencies so they can better understand other agency capabilities, collaborate with those organizations, and advance their missions. Our smart power approaches help clients move beyond simply reacting to problems to solving whole-of-government challenges. We’ve seen smart power executed well at a tactical level, but for it to be successful, smart power approaches must be developed prior to a crisis, rather than during or after. We’re also witnessing a greater acceptance of smart power concepts by a younger generation, especially those who have been deployed recently. These young men and women, both military and civilian, have embraced collaboration, coordination, and technologies that will allow smart power to become a critical component of the inevitable change in the way our government operates in complex environments.
