Lieutenant General (Ret.) Rick Waddell

Academy Geopolitical Intelligence Group Member at Academy Asset Management

Speaker

Lieutenant General Rick Waddell retired from the Army Reserves in 2021 after more than 20 years of active-duty service and 39 years of combined service. His military career culminated as the Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Senior Military Advisor to the Secretary of State, from 2018 to 2021. In 2019, he was the first Army Reservist promoted to Lieutenant General to serve in a normally active-duty position since World War II. Prior to this role, General Waddell served as Commander of the 76th Operational Response Command and Deputy Commander for Mobilization and Reserve Affairs at United States Southern Command. Earlier in his career, he served as the JTF Engineer at Joint Task Force Bravo in Honduras, and in multiple key staff roles in the United States and Iraq, and as the Commander of the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force for Counter-Corruption in Afghanistan. General Waddell has also served as the Deputy National Security Adviser in the Trump Administration and as a Director for European Security Affairs in the Clinton Administration. In addition to his distinguished military career, Waddell has published four books on military history and international relations and spent 17 years successfully launching businesses in Latin America in the retail, energy, and mining sectors.

General Waddell was commissioned as an officer in the Army in 1982 after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He additionally holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history and Portuguese from Oxford University earned as a Rhodes Scholar, a master’s degree in public administration from Webster University, and a Ph.D. in international relations from Columbia University.