Robert M. Gates served as the 22nd U.S. Secretary of Defense. Dr. Gates served eight U.S. presidents across both parties and has the distinction of being the only secretary of defense in U.S. history to be asked to remain in office by a newly elected president. He has led a distinguished career of public service and institutional reform both in and out of government. On his last day as Secretary, President Barack Obama awarded Gates the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

Gates began his career at the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, including 9 years on the National Security Council. He was the first career officer in CIA’s history to rise from entry-level employee to director. He served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 until 1993 and, through the collapse of the Soviet Union, restructured the intelligence community for a post-Cold War world.

Gates later served as President of Texas A&M University, one of the nation’s largest universities, from 2002 to 2006. As President, he launched a successful campaign to make Texas A&M one of the nation’s top twenty research universities.

As Secretary of Defense, Gates reversed losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while preparing the U.S. military for unconventional warfare and dramatic reductions in federal spending. Among his many initiatives, Gates championed the production and deployment of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, saving the lives and limbs of thousands of U.S. servicemembers. Gates is fondly remembered as the “Soldiers’ Secretary.”

For his service, Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has three times received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received CIA’s highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

Currently, Gates is a principal in the international strategic consulting firm Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and Aspen Strategy Group Executive Director Anja Manuel. Gates also serves as Chancellor of the College of William & Mary and as National Chairman of the Eisenhower Fellowships. He is Board Chairman of the Holdsworth Center, a Texas nonprofit institution dedicated to improving K-12 public education by supporting and developing education leaders. Gates is a member of the Board of Directors of the George and Barbara Bush Foundation and has served as National President of the Boy Scouts of America. Gates has authored four books, covering his experiences at CIA and at the Pentagon, leadership, and U.S. nonmilitary instruments of power.

Ellen E. McCarthy is a nationally recognized leader in intelligence, national security and information integrity, and the Founder and CEO of the Trust in Media Cooperative (TIM), a nonprofit building a common infrastructure for information quality. Through TIM, she is leading the development of shared standards, tools and institutional capacity to restore individual agency and enable informed decision-making at the speed and scale that democracy requires. With more than 30 years of experience across the U.S. intelligence community and public service, Ellen has held senior leadership roles spanning operations, policy and enterprise transformation. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland. 

Her career began as an all-source intelligence analyst at the Office of Naval Intelligence. She went on to serve in senior leadership roles including Director of Human Capital and Acting Director of Security for the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Director of Intelligence Operations, Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Coast Guard, where she led its deep integration into the Intelligence Community. 

From 2015 to 2018, Ellen served as Chief Operating Officer of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), where she drove agile governance reforms and expanded public-private partnerships. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she then served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (INR) from January 2019 to January 2021, providing critical intelligence to inform foreign policy. 

In the private sector, she led as President of Noblis NSP, developing cybersecurity and analytics tools for the intelligence community, and earlier as President of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), where she helped shape national conversations on cybersecurity, acquisition and homeland security. 

Today, through TIM, Ellen is leading the development of the Information Quality (InQ) Framework, a standards-based approach to evaluating credibility, completeness and transparency, along with tools that make quality visible and actionable; and partnerships with universities, libraries, news organizations and civic institutions to embed information quality into society as durable common infrastructure. 

Ellen serves on the Board of Directors of SAP NS2 and the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation and advises Babel Street, Penn State Applied Research Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.