Peter Gautier

Vice Admiral Peter Gautier (ret.) is a nonresident senior fellow at the Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also the president of Gautier Consulting, LLC; a senior fellow with the Center for Naval Analysis; and member of the US Department of State’s US Speaker Program.

He previously served as the acting Coast Guard vice commandant and deputy commandant for operations, where he developed strategy, operational policy, and capabilities to advance the US Coast Guard’s success in delivering its missions. He was also deputy commander, US Coast Guard Pacific Area, with responsibilities for all Coast Guard missions from the Rocky Mountains west to the waters off the eastern coast of Africa. Other roles within his thirty-eight-year career in the US Coast Guard include commander, Coast Guard Eleventh District, covering California and the eastern Pacific Ocean; commander, Sector New Orleans; chief of operations, Deployable Operations Group; and director of government and public affairs. He also served as the senior director for response policy at the US National Security Council, where he coordinated policy for all-hazards domestic incident management, national preparedness exercises, and continuity of government.

A career crisis responder, he had leadership roles following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Hurricane Katrina, the Space Shuttle Colombia disaster, the Boca Raton anthrax attack, and the World Trade Center attacks. He has been awarded the DHS Distinguished Service Medal, honored with the Harvard University National Preparedness Leadership Initiative Meta-Leader of the Year 2024, and named to the Washington Homeland Security Roundtable DHS Hall of Fame in 2024.

Gautier graduated from the US Coast Guard Academy with a bachelor of science in marine engineering; the University of Michigan with a master’s in chemical engineering; and the National War College with a master’s in national security strategy.