The Honorable Ellen Lord served as the first U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment from 2017 - 2021 leading the Department of Defense’s personnel, policy and processes for acquisition of hardware, software and services. Lord has more than 30 years of corporate experience in the automotive and defense industries, serving in a variety of capacities, including as President and Chief Executive Officer of Textron Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Textron Inc. from 2012-2017.

Currently, Lord serves on the Board of Directors for AAR Corporation, Parsons Corporation, SES S.A., Trident Solutions, and Exiger. She is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and serves on the Advisory Board for MIT Lincol Laboratory .She advises a number of aerospace, defense, and industrial companies and serves as Vice-Chair of the Naval Institute Board of Directors. Lord Vice-Chair of the Congressional Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) Commission and Tri-Chair of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Defense Technology Task Force, both groups having published final reports in 2024.