Smith-Turner Award
Join us on Tuesday, February 8, to recognize the Smith-Turner Expeditionary Operations Award recipient, Honorable Robert Work.
The Smith-Turner Expeditionary Operations Award is named after two of the foremost practitioners of Expeditionary Warfare during WWII: General Holland M. Smith, USMC, and Admiral Richmond K. Turner, USN. It is awarded to individuals who have provided momentous leadership, contributed significant guidance and decisions, and undertaken substantial actions resulting in improved national expeditionary warfare capability.
32nd Deputy Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense
Robert Work was the thirty-second Deputy Secretary of Defense, serving alongside three Secretaries of Defense across two administrations from May 2014 to July 2017. In 2001, he retired as a Colonel in the United States Marine Corps after 27 years on active duty. He subsequently was a Senior Fellow and then Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). In May 2009, he was confirmed as the thirty-first Under Secretary of the Navy in the first Obama administration. Mr. Work stepped down as the Under Secretary in March 2013 to become the Chief Executive Officer for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He remained in that position until he assumed the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense in May 2014. He currently is the President and Owner of TeamWork, LLC, which specializes in defense strategy and policy, programming and budgeting, military-technical competitions, revolutions in war, and the future of war. Most recently he was Co-Chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
Mr. Work holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois; an M.S. from the University of Southern California; an M.S. from the Naval Postgraduate School; and an M.I.P.P. from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
Mr. Work holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois; an M.S. from the University of Southern California; an M.S. from the Naval Postgraduate School; and an M.I.P.P. from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute of Strategic Studies.