Heather Hopkins has spent her career in Washington, D.C. and overseas in national security. She has successfully managed high-profile offices and led teams at the White House, the Departments of Defense and State, in war zones and on Capitol Hill. She advises decision makers and leaders at the c-suite level on best practices to achieve their priorities and advocates for their objectives. She is known as a strategic partner, problem solver, for building bridges, influencing outcomes, and providing valued counsel.

Ms. Hopkins is currently the Head of Defense Policy at Amazon Web Services (AWS). At AWS, she works with the DOD business to engage with key policy and decision makers to support the DOD mission using cloud services and capabilities, at all classification levels, from the enterprise to the tactical edge. She drives policy solutions for maximizing cloud technology for data management, cyber, AI/ML and quantum computing.

During Ms. Hopkins most recent tour at the Pentagon, she held three different senior roles. She was the Secretary of the Army’s Chief of Staff and Senior Adviser where she drove his guidance to run and manage the 1.1M person organization. Next, she advised the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the COO of the $800B enterprise, to manage policy issues on personnel, health, and readiness, as well as his leadership of the DOD COVID Task Force. She was his representative to work with Congress and other external stakeholders.

Finally, she established a new office at the Pentagon for Intergovernmental Affairs, to synchronize and coordinate the DOD’s interactions with governors, mayors and other state and local officials.

Ms. Hopkins previously was Vice President for government relations at the privately held innovative aerospace and defense company, Sierra Nevada Corporation. Prior to joining SNC, she was a director for government relations at BAE Systems, Inc. advocating on a variety of Army, Navy, and intelligence programs.

Ms. Hopkins served at the White House, on the National Security Council as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Legislative Affairs. In the early years of the Iraq War, Ms. Hopkins served two tours in Baghdad with the State Department as the Senior Adviser for Communications at U.S. Embassy Baghdad and ran protocol at the Coalition Provisional Authority. Prior to serving in the Executive Branch.

Ms. Hopkins was on Capitol Hill with the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich.