Joseph Felter

Joe Felter is the Director of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. He is an educator, researcher and entrepreneur with over 30 years of organizational leadership and management experience including 15 years working at the nexus of Stanford University and Silicon Valley.  He maintains teaching and research appointments at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Hoover Institution and Stanford Technology Ventures Program.  From 2017-2019 Joe served as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia. Joe is co-creator of “Hacking for Defense,” a defense innovation focused academic curriculum he helped develop and pilot at Stanford in 2016. A retired US Army Ranger and Special Forces officer, Joe served in a variety of special operations assignments with combat deployments to Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan. He received a B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point, MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, Graduate Certificate in Management from the University of West Australia, and Ph.D. from Stanford University.