Jen Easterly
Jen Easterly is a U.S. Army veteran, cybersecurity expert, and the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security in the Biden administration. In 2025, Easterly was appointed to a teaching position at her alma mater, the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA), but her appointment was revoked by Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll. 1 2
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Easterly served in the U.S. Army for 20 years conducting tours of duty in Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Easterly rose to prominence when she helped form the Army’s “first cyber battalion” and was “instrumental” in the formation of the United States Cyber Command. She later briefly worked in the private sector before returning to government work at CISA. As of 2025, she was working in an advisory capacity at Huntress, a cybersecurity company, and sat on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations. 3 1 4
Military Career
Jen Easterly graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and earned a Master’s degree in politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. 3 1 4
From 2000 to 2002, Easterly worked as an assistant professor of economics at USMA. From 2002 to 2004, she served as a senior policy advisor for then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. From 2004 to 2006, Easterly was based in Fort Meade, Maryland where she worked for the U.S. Army Intelligence and Central Command. From 2006 to 2013, Easterly operated mostly under the National Security Agency (NSA) and was deployed to Iraq for almost one year. From 2009 to 2010, Easterly was part of the U.S. Cyber Command Implementation Team which built the first cyber battalion for the U.S. Army. In 2010 and 2011, Easterly was deployed to Afghanistan for eight months. From 2011 to 2013, Easterly served as the deputy director for counter terrorism at the NSA. 3 1 4
Post-Military Career
From 2013 to 2016, Jen Easterly went back to the White House during the Obama administration to work as a special assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism. 3 1 4
In 2017, Easterly left the government sector for the first time to work at Morgan Stanley as the global head of the Cyber Security Center. Later, she became the head of firm resilience and the Fusion Resilience Center. 3 1 4
Biden Administration
In 2021, Easterly returned to the government to serve as the director of the Biden administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 3 1 4 Easterly helped develop the U.S. government’s guidelines to responding to new cybersecurity threats related to artificial intelligence. 5
During Easterly’s tenure, CISA was investigated by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government for allegedly colluding with major technology companies to engage in censorship of private speech. The House committees found evidence of what they considered to be censorship, including CISA forming a “rapid response team” to be physically deployed around the country to combat misinformation, and CISA scrubbing its website after President Joe Biden left office allegedly to conceal the extent of its activity. 6 Easterly left CISA in January 2025. 3
Military Academy Appointment and Recission
In July 2025, the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA) announced the appointment of Easterly as the Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair for the school’s Department of Social Sciences. Following the announcement, on July 30, Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll announced on X (formerly Twitter) that he had directed USMA to rescind Easterly’s appointment and pause the selection of USMA employees or instructors by outside groups. 7 8
Easterly has said that the revocation of her appointment resulted from dishonest accusations about her role in implementing censorship policies while running CISA. In a LinkedIn post, Easterly blamed Secretary Driscoll’s decision on “manufactured outrage that drowned out the quiet labor of truth and the steady pulse of integrity.” 2
Other Work
According to her LinkedIn, Easterly has been a visiting fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University since June 2025. 3 1 4
In August 2025, Easterly became a strategic advisor at Huntress, a cybersecurity firm. 3 At that time, Easterly sat on the board of trustees of the Morgan Stanley Foundation, the board of directors of Nuru International, and on the Advisory Council for Hostage US, a nonprofit that assists families with hostages held abroad. 4 Easterly was also a member of the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Global Leadership Network as of 2025. 9