Mr. Chao is a founding partner of Renaissance Strategic Advisors, a boutique aerospace/defense strategy, market insight, and M&A advisory firm; and a co-founder of Enlightenment Capital, an aerospace/defense private credit firm. Mr. Chao is a Registered Representative of and Securities Products are offered through BA Securities, LLC.

He brings three decades of aerospace/defense strategy management consulting, investment banking, equity analysis, investing and policy analysis expertise. Prior to establishing RSAdvisors, Mr. Chao was the Director of Defense-Industrial Initiatives at the Center forStrategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C.-based, non-partisan defense and foreign policy think tank, from 2003-2007; where he still remains as a Senior Associate.

Before joining CSIS in 2003, Mr. Chao was a Managing Director and senior aerospace/defense analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston from 1999-2003, where he was responsible for following the U.S. and global aerospace/defense industry. He remained a CSFB independent senior adviser from 2003-2006. Prior to joining CSFB, Pierre was the senior aerospace/defense analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter from 1995-1999. He served as the senior aerospace/defense industry analyst at Smith Barney during 1994 and as a director at JSA International, a Boston/Paris-based management consulting firm that focused on the aerospace/defense industry (1986-88, 1990-93). Mr. Chao was also a co-founder of JSA Research, an equity research boutique specializing in the aerospace/defense industry. Before signing on with JSA, he worked in the New York and London offices of Prudential-Bache Capital Funding as a mergers and acquisitions banker focusing on aerospace/defense (1988-90). Over the course of his Wall Street career, Mr. Chao’s team was ranked #1 by Institutional Investor every year eligible and he was on the Institutional Investor All-America Research Team every year eligible. He participated in 31 landmark aerospace/defense equity offerings/IPOs raising $11.7 billion.

He is also a guest lecturer at the National Defense University and the Defense Acquisition University, he has served on multiple Defense Science Board task forces and was a member of the Defense Business Board (2010-2013). He was a member of the board of directors of KeyW Corporation (Nasdaq:KEYW) (2010-16) and Vistronix Intelligence & Technology Solutions (2014-16). He is a holder of the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, holds Series 79/63 licenses and a Top Secret security clearance.

Pierre earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Political Science and Management Science from M.I.T.