Jack Riley recently retired from a career guiding and supporting senior-most domestic and allied national security, defense, and homeland decisionmakers on complex, critical challenges. Over the course of his career he was responsible for managing, overseeing and executing more than $1 billion of public policy research. Prior to his tenure at RAND he was a senior civil servant at the US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, where he ran a drug epidemiology program and conducted research on substance abuse, firearms, and violent crime.
Jack received his PhD in public policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School. He was recognized with the school’s distinguished alumni award in 2023. He obtained his Master’s in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and his BA in economics and Russian from the University of Michigan. Jack is active with many non-profit and public policy organizations, including service on the board of the National Defense University Foundation and on the national security advisory team of John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign. He has provided a $2 million gift to the University of Michigan to enhance the Ford School of Public Policy’s ability to research emerging policy issues and to the College of Literature, Science and the Arts to provide scholarship support to students from low-income families from his native state of Michigan. In his spare time Jack is an avid traveler and scuba diver. He has visited more than 100 countries and participated in numerous citizen-science diving projects intended to help preserve and protect manta rays, coral reefs, and other elements of the ocean environment.