Whitney McNamara is a Senior Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies in the National Security and Technology practice, advising emerging and disruptive technology companies on navigating with the Department of Defense and the U.S. government broadly.
Ms. McNamara is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at both the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. At the Atlantic Council, she served as lead author on the Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption and the Commission on Software-Defined Warfare, both of which examined acquisition and budgetary reform as pathways to accelerating commercial technology integration and advancing the Department’s adoption of software innovation and best practices. She also serves as a Senior Advisor to the Hypersonic Task Force and the ReForge Commission.
Prior to joining BGS, Ms. McNamara served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OSD R&E) as the Science and Technology portfolio lead for the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), where she advised senior Department leaders on emerging technology adoption strategies and approaches. Before that, she served as an emerging technologies policy subject matter expert at the DoD’s Chief Information Office, where she developed and executed technology policy strategies and delivered actionable solutions to restructure DoD operations, training, and testing of combat capabilities valued at over $100 billion in support of a White House-led effort to deconflict spectrum for commercial 5G rollout.
Previously, Ms. McNamara spent four years as a Senior Analyst at CSBA, advising senior defense leaders on emerging technology adoption through a policy, acquisition, and operational lens in the context of long-term U.S. military competition. She is a former National Security Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and has held positions at the Department of State’s Political-Military Bureau and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy.
Ms. McNamara holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. in Strategic Studies and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she was a Bradley Fellow and a Presidential Management Fellowship Finalist. Her work has appeared in or been cited by the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, Breaking Defense, C4ISRNET, and Air Force Magazine.