U.S. Dept. of Veteran's Affairs

"Alum Focus: Leo Mackay Cites Belfer Center, School Impact on Career"

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter

Spring 2008

"Going to the Kennedy School of Government changed my life," says Leo Mackay, Kennedy School alum (MPP '91) and former Belfer Center International Security Program fellow (1991-'92).

Mackay is currently vice president for Corporate Business Development at Lockheed Martin Corporation. His impressive résumé includes service as Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs, head of operations for a large healthcare business, "top gun" pilot in the Navy's Fighter Squadron Eleven, and military assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy.

At the Kennedy School, Mackay wrote his PhD dissertation on nuclear proliferation policy after the Cold War. As an International Security Program fellow, he took part in the Center's nuclear weapons and counter proliferation policy research, which became the nucleus for the incoming administration's policy agenda in 1992. In June of 1993, he was asked by then Assistant Defense Secretary Ashton Carter (now co-director of the Preventive Defense Project and member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors) to serve as his military assistant.

"The timing could not have been more exciting for someone in my shoes," Mackay says. "I went from being a Kennedy School student to a fellow to working in the Pentagon on the security policy issues that were a major focus of the work at the Belfer Center."

Mackay says that his courses and training at the Kennedy School and his research and analysis at the Belfer Center have given him a "way to think and work through policy, operational, and political issues" in all of his public and private positions.

"I went to the Kennedy School to study with Ash (Carter) and Graham (Allison) and Joe (Nye) and Al (Carnesale) and came out on the other side with them considering me a colleague and friend," Mackay says. As part of the Aspen Strategy Group, Mackay continues to brainstorm policy issues with a number of his Kennedy School colleagues.

Leo Mackay continues close relationships with other Kennedy School and Belfer Center alums as well, such as Kurt Campbell, Michele Flournoy, Owen Cote, Laura Holgate, and Steve Kelman. And, it was while studying in the Kennedy School library that Mackay met his future wife, Heather Deebel ('91), then a senior at Harvard College and a Kennedy School library assistant. "This is a great community," he says.

For Academic Citation:
Communications Office. "Alum Focus: Leo Mackay Cites Belfer Center, School Impact on Career." Belfer Center Newsletter (Spring 2008).