Ms. Lori Leffler has more than 30 years of experience developing and implementing strategic visions to lead national security missions and corporate organizations. Her experience includes quantitative and qualitative analysis, management studies, and reviews. Lori’s extensive management and supervisory experience and her strategic planning, thinking, and communications expertise have provided her with the foundation to make positive impacts as a government and industry leader. Leffler brings this expertise to the Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) as the Deputy Director & Chief of Staff, where she works across the Center, government, industry, and academia to support the IWC’s mission.

Immediately before joining the IWC, Leffler served as the Special Advisor to the Dean of the School of Arctic and Climate Studies at the Department of Defense Ted Stevens Center (TSC) for Arctic Security Studies. In this position, she worked to expand the role of the TSC by enriching education opportunities and networking platforms for civilian and military security practitioners. Her work enhanced the TSC’s mission to provide security cooperation tools as a soft power while supporting the DoD’s work in the Arctic and advancing U.S National Security interests.

Additionally, Leffler has held key government and senior-level industry positions where she has overseen strategic enterprise-wide programs supporting more than 2.8 million DoD personnel. Her vast experience and insight are critical to the Department’s implementation and management of sustainable programs and missions supporting DoD stakeholders.

Her educational background includes the DoD’s Defense Senior Leadership Development Program in 2023, a master’s degree in National Security and Resource Strategy with a focus on American Studies from the National Defense University in 2022, and a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from National Louis University in 2003.