Defense Innovation Board Conducts First Meeting With New Members

A new set of members making up the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board gathered on Oct. 17 in a partially public meeting to discuss a variety of topics such as national defense and digital modernization strategies.

The panel of technology experts from industry and academia now counts multiple Wash100 winners and past Potomac Officers Club speakers in its ranks, including Susan Gordon, a board member at CACI International and MITRE; Michael Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and William Roper, a distinguished professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and senior adviser at McKinsey and Company, DefenseScoop reported.

The other new additions to the DIB are Gilda Barabino, president of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering; Reid Hoffman, a Greylock partner and cofounder of LinkedIn; Ryan Swann, chief data analytics officer at Vanguard; and William Thornberry, a former representative of Texas and head of the House Armed Services Committee.

The DIB is chaired by Michael Bloomberg, who was appointed to the position by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in June.

Austin and other senior Department of Defense officials attended the meeting. According to Colleen Laughlin, the DIB’s executive director, he instructed the DIB to advise DOD in the development of a national defense science and technology strategy.