LEADERSHIP AND STAFF

Director

Col. Todd Schmidt, Ph.D., U.S. Army, Retired

Colonel (Retired) Todd Schmidt, Ph.D., assumed duty as the director of the Simons Center for Ethical Leadership and Interagency Cooperation Jan. 1, 2026. He is a retired senior military officer with nearly 30 years of experience and leadership within the U.S. Army with specific expertise in missile defense operations.

Just prior to retiring from military service in 2025, Schmidt served as director of Army University Press at Army University and the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was editor-in-chief for Military Review and executive producer of Army University Films. He is the author of Silent Coup of the Guardians; senior fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies; a research fellow with the Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic at West Point, and an Association of the United States Army (AUSA) leadership fellow. He is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Cosmos Club, havens for fellowship, the arts, sciences, learning, and the sharing of ideas by scholars and practitioners of action. (Full bio)

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Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow

Lt. Col. John J. Nelson, U.S. Army, Retired

John serves as the deputy director and senior research fellow for the Simons Center. John served in the U.S. Army for more than 20 years in the Air Defense Artillery.

After retiring from military service in 2007, he has led numerous analytical and organizational improvement efforts for the private sector, government, and military organizations. In 2015, he cofounded Morris, Nelson & Associates, LLC (MNA) and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. For the past several years, he has worked with several interagency organizations, law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels as well as non-profit organizations combatting Transnational Organized Crime. (Full bio)

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Copy Editor

Jennifer Dessert

Jennifer serves as the editor for the CGSC Foundation Press and Simons Center publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in technical writing from Northern Arizona University.

Jennifer has more than 20 years of professional experience in technical writing, focusing on research and authoring, document design, and reviewing for the overall quality of deliverables for a wide variety of clients. She has experience in writing government contracts, creating content from existing data, providing developmental edits of content, reviewing marketing materials and procedural documents for clients, and creating reference documents. She also has experience working with writing teams in proposal and client delivery environments.