Ann Rondeau is a visionary leader with broad executive experience and a track record of achieving results. She has a reputation for acting with integrity, for asking hard questions, and for building strong and enduring avenues for collaboration. A former United States Navy Vice Admiral, her distinguished career includes responsibilities for complex operations afloat and ashore in the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as experience in strategy development and policy advisory roles at the highest corporate levels of the Department of Defense. Her post-Navy career continues her record of influencing transformative change and opportunities. She is collaborative and relates amicably and effectively across personalities and cultures. She has been privileged to lead organizational and cultural transformation in diverse and complex environments. With keen instincts in dynamic environments, she sees through problems, identifies opportunities, and builds consensus. While building a reputation leading troubled organizations to safer waters, Ann also adeptly leads healthy organizations to anticipate future opportunities to build financial, political, and moral support for change.
In addition to experience in multiple Navy operational domains, including antisubmarine warfare, air operations, maritime and joint transportation, logistics and sealift, Ann has extensive experience running the business operations of the Navy, ranging in value from $300M to $2B annually. She successfully led the redesign and repurposing of military installations to accommodate significant changes in lines of business, while continuing to meet on-going functions and missions. Responsibilities included oversight of facility construction projects ranging in value from $300M in Millington, Tennessee to more than $1B in Great Lakes, Illinois. Projects were completed on time, on budget, and in sequence, while government and contractor workforces were transformed to be ready to meet new workload requirements.
Throughout her Naval career Ann served in various strategic concepts and planning roles, including as a Navy staff officer working on the maritime strategy, the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group, and the OSD policy planning, policy analysis, and Africa Region offices.
As a White House Fellow at the Department of Justice and at the request and direction of the United States Attorney General, Ann served as the AG’s National Security Advisor for two years. Her ability to negotiate creative solutions and discern and design complex policy issues enabled the AG’s office to shape outcomes throughout the U.S government interagency, including FEMA, DEA, INS and FBI, the White House, the Department of State’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and High Commissioner for Refugees, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the broad interagency network.
Ann served as the Commander, Naval Service Training Command (Great Lakes) where she led mission of all Navy accessions commands, including the Navy’s only boot camp, as well as NROTC, NJROTC, and all officer accessions except for the Unites States Naval Academy. The team was highly successful in resetting all metrics in the right direction. In this job, Ann oversaw the $1.5B recapitalization of Great Lakes Training Command.
As Deputy Commander, United States Transportation Command, she coordinated with federal, state, local, and international authorities to enable successful execution of $30B annual global logistics operations in response to natural disasters and homeland defense and in support of high intensity combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her negotiations ensured effective, secure, and efficient routing and handling via land, sea, and air distribution services. While serving as Deputy Commander, Ann led a cross-disciplinary team to introduce new approaches and new technology applications to information management in strategic and operational logistics.
Ann was selected as President, National Defense University, in Washington, DC, a graduate institution with five schools and nine research centers at the time of her Presidency. As an institution with a long-standing reputation for education as well as influential scholarship and research in the public sphere, she was instrumental in expanding the international program to include military and civilian students to countries such as Vietnam.
After leaving the United States Navy, Ann served briefly as an independent consultant with IBM’s leading-edge cognitive computing project, The Watson Group. She assisted DOD and other federal agencies in defining applications for artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning.
She was recruited to be the President of the College of DuPage (Illinois), with a mandate to re-establish executive integrity, institutional reputation, a positive culture and public trust, address funding shortfalls, restore financial accountability, and regain full accreditation for one of the largest single campus community colleges in the country ($325M operation/32,000 student/1400 faculty). During her tenure, she worked closely with the Board of Trustees successfully leading a turnaround in every aspect of the mission and culture, including improving the Moody’s and S&P Bond ratings with further improvements in what would have been her fourth year as President. With her leadership and the support of the Board of Trustees, the College of DuPage created the very successful and enduring economic and entrepreneurial engine of Innovation DuPage, an incubation and acceleration center that offers entrepreneurs a roadmap for transforming ideas into viable commercial ventures.
Ann was subsequently appointed by the Secretary of the Navy as the 13th President of the Naval Postgraduate School, a graduate university that is principally focused on science and technology education and research, experimentation, and innovation in support of defense and national security needs of the United States and its global allies. NPS operates with an annual budget of approximately $125M in operations and $100M in research grants. Currently NPS has a student body of 2700 students and a faculty and staff of 850 military and civilian personnel. With an eye on delivering capability and at the direction of two Secretaries of the Navy, Ann is leading a difference-making project of establishing NPS as a center for Naval innovation and solutions delivery. She is leading a fundamental transformation of NPS, to include institutional fundamentals in support of warfighter development and warfighting.
Her pro bono activities have been many, including: Board of Directors, United States Institute of Peace; Board of Directors, German Marshall Fund; Board of Directors, The Atlantic Council as an advisor to the Canadian Defense College Foundation and was a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors; Board of Directors, National Museum of the American Sailors; Board of Directors, Council of Higher Education Accreditation; Board of Directors, Chicago Regional Growth Corporation; Board of Directors, Choose DuPage (regional development organization for Chicago northwest suburbs); accreditation committees for the United States Naval Academy and the University of Memphis; Tennessee/Mid-South Economic Development Board; DoD liaison to the Center for the Study of the Presidency; Military Advisory Board (studying energy and environment impacts on national security); Flag Officer Advisory Council for Arizona State University, Board of Trustees for Princeton Theological Seminary, Yorktown Institute, Arlington National Cemetery Committee, and others.
She served as Vice Chair for the Board of Trustees, American Public University System (NASDAQ:APEI). She presently serves on two boards within Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR), a $11B utilities distribution and transmission company.
In her Board service, Ann has served on succession, membership, governance, audit, compensation and strategic planning committees. She has been a speaker for many years on wide-ranging and myriad subjects, including military strategy and mission, political-military affairs, military-civilian affairs, ethics, public policy analysis and research in the public domain, education and training, and most importantly leadership.
Ann holds a BA degree in History and Social Science from Eisenhower College, a MA degree in
Comparative Government from Georgetown University and a Doctorate in Education from Northern Illinois University as well as an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from Carthage College (Wisconsin). She has received numerous awards for leadership and public service including the New York City USO 2008 Woman of the Year Award and, in 2013, The Women’s Center’s Leadership Award.
Vice Adm. Craig Clapperton Commander, Fleet Cyber Command, 10th Fleet, Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber, Navy
Gaurang Dävé Cyber Technology Officer, Marine Corps Systems Command
Mark Gorak Principal Director for Resources & Analysis, DOD
Ben Motten CIO, Naval Information Warfare Systems Command
Kaitie Penry Director of Research Innovation, Naval Postgraduate School
Jane Rathbun CIO, Department of the Navy
David Reaves Director, Navy & Marine Corps, Public Sector, Verizon
Ann Rondeau President, Naval Postgraduate School
