Eric Rosenbach

Rosenbach graduated from Gettysburg Area High School in 1991 and played football and basketball while a student there.

On a ROTC scholarship at Davidson, Rosenbach was elected student body president, played quarterback for the Davidson football team, and was a ROTC battalion commander.

Rosenbach got involved in Davidson's Dean Rusk International Studies Program and found public service appealing.

A Davidson article quotes him as saying, “Public service motivated me.

It’s a rewarding feeling to know you’re making a little bit of difference in the world.

I figured that I’d be either a history or government teacher, or work in the foreign service.

” The Dean Rusk program gave Rosenbach a grant to go to Vietnam - the country where his father had flown for the US Air Force and had almost been shot down.

The trip inspired him to think deeply about military use of force and US foreign policy.

Upon graduation from Davidson, Rosenbach became a Fulbright Scholar and studied privatization in post-communist Bulgaria for a year.

He then entered the US Army as an intelligence officer in the Army (see early career).

Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Rosenbach received his B.A. in Political Science in 1995 from Davidson College where he participated in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC, AROTC) program.

He was a Fulbright Scholar 1995 - 1996.

Rosenbach's background is in cybersecurity, both public and private sector.

He was the first-ever DoD ‘cyber tzar’ known as the Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of Defense.

Rosenbach served as the commander of a communications intelligence unit in the US Army for four years, 1996–2000.

The unit, which worked closely with the National Security Agency,  provided strategic information to support US operations in Bosnia and Kosovo.

The Central Intelligence Agency named it the top intelligence organization in the U.S. military for two consecutive years.

From 2000 to 2002 he advised Tiscali, the then-largest Internet service provider in Europe, on cybersecurity as their Chief Security Officer, and prior to that, he was an Army intelligence communications officer.

In 2000 Rosenbach left the Army with the rank of captain.

He became the chief security officer for Tiscali, an internet telecommunication company that was then the largest Internet service provider in Europe.

For two years he was responsible for their cybersecurity.

He recollects, “It was such a different environment from the army.

I had a fancy company car and flew all over Europe.

But then 9/11 happened, and that really jarred me.

I realized what I was doing didn’t feel rewarding, and went back to school intent on doing something in the public sector.”

Rosenbach attended Harvard Kennedy School from 2002 to 2004 and received a Masters in Public Policy.

He was HKS professors Richard A. Clarke and Graham Allison's Graduate Assistant; they both have been great mentors to him.

He received a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2004 and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center in 2007.

After graduating from HKS in 2004, Rosenbach worked on the core staff of John Kerry's 2004 Presidential Campaign for Kerry's security advisors Rand Beers and Susan Rice.

Returning to Harvard Kennedy School to teach in 2007, Rosenbach was the executive director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs for three years before going to the DoD.

Upon graduating he enrolled into the Georgetown University Law Center and obtained a Juris Doctor in 2007.

Rosenbach learned German at the Volkshochschule Rosenheim in Germany.

From September 2011 to August 2014, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber, in which role he oversaw and led the DoD's cybersecurity strategy.

Rosenbach continued to oversee cybersecurity as Chief of Staff.

The Honorable Eric Brien Rosenbach is an American public servant and Harvard professor who served as Pentagon Chief of Staff from July 2015 to January 2017 and as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security from September 2014 to September 2015.

As Chief of Staff, Rosenbach assisted Secretary Ash Carter on the Department of Defense's major challenges of the time, which included increased Russian aggression, the Syrian Civil War, and North Korean missile tests.

He would again return to Harvard in May 2017 to become co-director of the Belfer Center with Secretary Ash Carter.

Eric Rosenbach was born at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado.

His father, Dr. William E. Rosenbach, a thirty-year Air Force Veteran, served in the U.S. Air Force flying a Lockheed C-130 Hercules in the Vietnam War.

A professor at the academy, Dr. Rosenbach was an influential force in Eric Rosenbach's decision to join the military through the ROTC program.