Plenary Session: Advancing the Homeland Security Enterprise

Suzanne Spaulding is senior adviser for homeland security and director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She also serves as a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Previously, she served as undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where she led the National Protection and Programs Directorate, now called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), managing a $3 billion budget and a workforce of 18,000 that is charged with strengthening cybersecurity and protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, including election infrastructure. Ms. Spaulding has worked in the executive branch in Republican and Democratic administrations and on both sides of the aisle in Congress. She was general counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and minority staff director for the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She also spent six years at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she was assistant general counsel and the legal adviser to the director’s Nonproliferation Center. She was executive director of two congressionally created commissions, on weapons of mass destruction and on terrorism. Following the attacks of 9/11, Ms. Spaulding worked with key critical infrastructure sectors as they reviewed their security posture and advised the CEOs of the Business Roundtable. In 2002, she was appointed by Governor Mark Warner of Virginia to the Secure Commonwealth Panel to advise the governor and the legislature regarding preparedness issues. She was managing partner of the Harbour Group, a principal in the Bingham Consulting Group, and of counsel to Bingham McCutchen LLP. In addition to her work at CSIS, Ms. Spaulding currently serves on a number of corporate boards and advisory boards and is a member of the Homeland Security Experts Group (HSEG).

Rob Walker is the executive director, Homeland Security Experts Group and an outreach manager for The MITRE Corporation, where he is leading efforts to elevate the conversations around homeland security risks and opportunities. Previously he was the executive director of the Aspen Security Forum and the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Program. Walker led the Forum for three years, gaining the highest rate of news coverage in the history of the Institute.

Walker retired from the U.S. Army after serving for over 20 years in various worldwide assignments and leadership roles. He was instrumental in the return of the U.S. Army’s presence in Eastern Europe—an effort to assure NATO allies and deter further westward aggression by Russia. A career field artillery officer, his career was marked by assignments and roles in military-to-military relationship building and fostering of interoperability.

He has received numerous military awards including two Bronze Star Medals, the Valorous Unit Award, five Meritorious Service Medals, the Global War on Terrorism Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal with two stars, the Korean Defense Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Joint Service Achievement Medal. He is also a holder of the prestigious U.S. Field Artillery Associations’ Order of St. Barbara.

Walker holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a master’s degree in international relations from Webster University.

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Mr. Evanina currently serves as Founder and CEO of the Evanina Group advising CEOs and Board of Directors on strategic corporate risk. Mr. Evanina provides a wide array of elite strategic risk consultation services to Boards of Directors, CEOs, and senior decision makers operating within a very complex and competitive global economy and with nefarious nation state actors. Clients include corporations within energy, financial services, telecommunications, biomedical, technology, private equity, national security, and retail sectors. 

Mr. Evanina currently serves on multiple advisory boards and is an instructor at the University of Chicago’s distinguished Graham School. 

Mr. Evanina frequently appear in national news outlets (television, print, op-eds) advising on threats, vulnerability and mitigating strategies. 

Previously, Mr. Evanina was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 6, 2020, to be the first Senate-confirmed Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC). Mr. Evanina served as the Director of NCSC since June 2, 2014. In this position, he was the head of Counterintelligence (CI) for the U.S. Government.  

Mr. Evanina was responsible for leading and supporting the CI and security activities of the US Intelligence Community, the U.S. Government, and U.S. private sector entities at risk from intelligence collection or attack by foreign adversaries. Under NCSC, he oversaw national-level programs and activities such as the National Insider Threat Task Force; personnel security and background investigations; information technology protection standards and compliance; CI cyber operations; supply chain risk management; threat awareness to sectors of the US critical infrastructure; national-level damage assessments from espionage or unauthorized disclosures, CI mission management, and national CI and security training programs. 

Under Mr. Evanina’s leadership, NCSC produced the President’s National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States of America 2020, which has been instrumental in raising foreign intelligence threat awareness to critical infrastructure sectors and the private sector executives regarding supply chain, economic security, cyber, and malign foreign influence. 

Mr. Evanina chaired the National Counterintelligence Policy Board, and the Allied Security and Counterintelligence Forum comprised of senior CI and security leaders from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. Mr. Evanina also served as Chair of the NATO Counterintelligence Panel.  

Prior to his selection as the Director of NCSC, Mr. Evanina served as the Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterespionage Group.

Mr. Evanina previously served as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, where he led operations in both the Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Divisions. 

Mr. Evanina served over 31 years of distinguished federal service, 24 of which as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the start of his law enforcement career in 1996, he investigated organized crime and violent crimes through the FBI’s Newark Field Office. He then served on an FBI SWAT unit for 10 years, ultimately supervising this unit. He led some of the highest profile terrorism investigations in our nation’s history including the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax attacks, and the Daniel Pearl kidnapping. During his tenure with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), Mr. Evanina was selected as a Supervisory Special Agent and received the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence for his leadership in the investigation into convicted spy Leandro Argoncillo. 

Mr. Evanina’s government career began in 1989 as a Project Manager with the General Services Administration, in Philadelphia. 

Mr. Evanina was born and raised in Peckville, PA. He holds an Associate’s Degree in History from Keystone College in LaPlume, PA, a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration from Wilkes University in Wilkes Barre, PA, and a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Arcadia University in Philadelphia. Mr. Evanina was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Keystone College. 

Mr. Evanina is married to his wife JulieAnne and has two sons, Dominic and Will.

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The Honorable Juan Zarate is global co-managing partner and chief strategy officer at K2 Integrity.

Juan provides expert counsel and strategic guidance to clients on complex internal and international financial investigations; manages multidisciplinary teams advising on global anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance remediation; and oversees financial-integrity-related reforms for public and private institutions.

Juan has advised on the most challenging AML and financial integrity enforcement issues facing the private sector, working with key financial intelligence units, regulators, finance ministries, prosecutors, and law enforcement agencies around the world. He has also led some of the largest asset recovery ventures in history, including the return of more than $3 billion in Iraqi assets.

Juan is also the chair and co-founder of Consilient, a newly launched company dedicated to establishing the next-generation AML/CFT system through the application of revolutionary technologies.

Prior to K2 Integrity, Juan served as the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism (“counterterrorism czar”), where he was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. counterterrorism strategy and policies related to transnational security threats, including anti-money laundering, kleptocracy, and transnational organized crime. He was the first-ever assistant secretary of the treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes. In this role, he led the post-9/11 anti-money laundering and sanctions regime expansion in the United States; helped develop the international standards for AML/CFT and proliferation finance; supervised the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Treasury’s Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF); and drove the innovative use of the Treasury’s national-security-related powers and ultimately the establishment of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). Prior to 9/11, Juan served as federal terrorism prosecutor, working on international terrorism cases like the bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole.

Juan sits on the boards of Northwestern Mutual and Guardian Space Technology Solutions, and on the director’s advisory board for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Since 2014, he has served as an independent adviser to Coinbase, the largest virtual asset service provider in the United States. Juan sat on the board of the Vatican’s Supervisory and Financial Information Authority for over five years; sat on the Boston Dynamics board for over three years; and for seven years was the U.S. advisor on HSBC’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee and remains an advisor to HSBC’s Group Risk Committee. He also sat on the board of Cambridge Quantum Computing North America.

Juan is the chair and co-founder of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, among other advisory roles for several think tanks and institutions. He was a visiting lecturer in law at the Harvard Law School for eight years and is a published author, including his books Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare (2013) and Forging Democracy (1994).

Juan is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, where he received the John P. Reardon award as the top male scholar-athlete. He was a Rotary International Scholar at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.

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