Bess Dopkeen is the Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and
Engineering in the Department of Defense.
Previously Ms. Dopkeen was the lead majority professional staff member for Science and
Technology on the House Armed Services Committee on the Cyber, Innovative Technologies,
and Information Systems Subcommittee in the 117th Congress. In the 116th Congress she was
the majority’s lead professional staff member for Science and Technology and Countering
Weapons of Mass Destruction on the HASC’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee.
Before her time as a congressional staffer, Ms. Dopkeen was a senior analyst in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation (CAPE). She led the Defense
Innovation Board's 2018 Software Acquisition and Practices congressionally mandated study for
the Under Secretary of Acquisition and Sustainment. For five years she was the Program
Manager for the Cost Assessment Data Enterprise, the Department’s unified initiative to
strategically collect, organize and use cost data across the cost community. In 2015 Bess led the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition’s better data initiative. Bess worked on the
Department’s independent cost estimates of major acquisition programs and automated
information systems, and on other initiatives including CAPE's national security space launch
study, the Secretary’s evolutionary satellite acquisition-efficiency project, and the National
Nuclear Security Administration’s national labs labor-cost analysis. At CAPE she received the
Secretary of Defense medals for Meritorious and Exceptional Civilian Service and the Office of
the Secretary of Defense's award for excellence. Before CAPE she served as an analyst for the
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.
Bess received a B.A. in Political Science from Tufts University, and a M.S. in National Resource
Strategy from the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at National
Defense University, where she was a distinguished graduate. Bess is a Council on Foreign
Relations Term Member, was a Center for a New American Security Next Generation fellow,
and has been a Truman National Security Project Fellow since 2009. Bess helped create Tufts’
Tisch College of Civic Life’s summer fellowship and mentorship program in DC and created and
led the Tufts Fellowship program in the Pentagon for over a decade. She first moved to DC as a
Tufts University Dutko fellow. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Paul, and their
two children.