Kathleen Hicks

About Kathleen Hicks

Kathleen Hicks served as the 35th US Deputy Secretary of Defense, leading the day-to-day global operations of the Department of Defense, the nation’s largest and most complex employer. Her tenure focused on driving value through innovations that supported warfighters, reformed business operations, enhanced talent management, and improved service member and family resilience.

A board member and strategic advisor in the private sector, Hicks also holds appointments as a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Kissinger Center for Global Affairs. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the MIT Corporation Political Science Department Visiting Committee. She is on the International Leadership Council of the Center for European Policy Analysis and also co-chairs the Atlantic Council’s ReForge Commission, focused on American industrial revitalization. She is the proud sponsor of the future Virginia-class submarine USS Baltimore (SSN-812)—a personal honor rooted in her family's Navy and Marine Corps legacy.

Hicks earned her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her MPA from the University of Maryland, and her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College.