Admiral Craig Faller (US Navy, Ret.) is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Faller is also currently a senior fellow at the National Defense University, a senior fellow at Florida International University, and on the Advisory Board of the Penn State Applied Research Laboratory.
Faller has decades of global national-security leadership experience and has previously led large, complex organizations. From 2018 to 2021, he commanded United States Southern Command in Miami, Florida, where he led a diverse team of seven thousand people with an annual operating budget of over one billion dollars. In this role, he enhanced Western Hemisphere security by building strong, trusted partnerships between the US military and Latin American and Caribbean security forces. His team rapidly responded to a myriad of complex security challenges to include transnational criminal organizations, the Venezuela crisis, the global pandemic, and the August 2020 Haiti earthquake.
Previously, Faller served as the senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis. He assisted the defense secretary on all matters from military operations and national-security strategy development, to management of the department’s budget of over seven hundred billion dollars and global engagement with world leaders.
Previously as the US Department of the Navy’s chief of legislative affairs and the top Navy liaison with Congress, he represented the secretary of the navy and the chief of naval operations on the Hill. Faller engaged with Congress on the Navy’s $160 billion annual budget and all Navy programs from research and development to acquisition.
Leading the Navy’s five thousand-person recruiting organization, Faller started a digital recruiting program and a new Navy wide marketing and advertising branding strategy. His focus on diversity and quality helped the Navy gain a competitive advantage through new talent acquisition.
Faller has other global experience leading large teams as the director of operations for United States Central Command, where he coordinated military operations and activities across the Middle East and coordinated command of an aircraft carrier strike group and two warships: the USS Stethem (DDG-63), and USS Shiloh (CG-63).
He is a 1983 graduate of the US Naval Academy with a bachelor of science in systems engineering and is a 1990 distinguished graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School with a master’s in national security affairs (strategic planning). A nuclear trained surface warfare officer, Faller was both a student and instructor in the Naval Nuclear Power Program.