LeAnne Noelani Howard is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is the senior principal for national security at MITRE. In this role, she leads teams supporting the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies and integrates analyses across a wide range of US departments and agencies, allies, and partner sponsors. Howard advises MITRE executive leadership on US and international policy and strategy to inform its scientific research, concept development, prototyping, and interoperability efforts. Howard is also an adjunct professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Prior to joining MITRE, Howard served at the White House as National Security Council special advisor for NATO, where she led coordination for the Alliance’s seventy-fifth anniversary summit. Howard has more than twenty years of experience in policy advisory and leadership positions across the US government and NATO. This experience includes a decade focused on global special operations and another decade on interagency, defense, and military strategy and planning. She has worked in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe in addition to Capitol Hill and multiple Pentagon and Combatant Command tours.

Howard earned a doctorate in management from Cardiff Metropolitan University in a NATO-sponsored program. She earned an MBA from Fairfield University, an MPS in legislative affairs from George Washington University, and an MA with distinction from the US Naval War College. A proud Honolulu native, she continues to support programs connecting the Pacific and Atlantic.