Zia Allen Tompkins, P.E.
Annandale,United States
Summary
Energetic and innovative servant leader eager to lead and grow organizations with 20+ years in elite governmental, international and academic organizations. Skilled in strategic planning, problem-solving, and communication with an unmatched ability to lead teams and build coalitions.
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
President's Daily Briefer
Office of the Director for National Intelligence (This is a federal job)
01.2023 - Current
- PDB Briefer to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.
- Coordinated and delivered intelligence during volatile period which included the Russian counteroffensive in Ukraine, Sudanese civil war, People's Liberation Army standoffs in the South China Sea, Yevgeny Prigozhin's coup in Russia and 7 October HAMAS War.
- Supported DepSecDef in role as Chief Operating Officer of the DoD by maintaining broad subject matter expertise across functional areas, answering requests for information across advanced military capabilities, worldwide defense economics and industrial base, space/counterspace, nuclear, advanced biotech, cyberspace, electronic warfare, defense logistics, as well as bleeding edge of S&T topics such as AI, semiconductors and quantum computing.
- Generated briefings, summaries and talking points for principals for White House oval sessions, Deputy Small Groups and, in conjunction with the militry services, driving defense requirements and acquisition,
- Made several difficult, yet ultimately correct analytical assessments during crisis operations.
- Provided tasking and strategic direction to the analytical and collection communities.
- Provided executive feedback while driving integration and collaboration across the interagency.
- Mentored a multitude of young intelligence analysts
- Other tasks as assigned.
Intelligence Officer / Mission Manager
Defense Intelligence Agency (This is a federal job)
03.2021 - 01.2023
- Functional manager for DIA's Modernized Integrated Database (MIDB), the foundational military intelligence database of record supporting 200+ external applications across joint command and control, targeting, defense planning, mission data for precision strike platforms, electronic warfare, space/counterspace as well as analysis and production supporting decision makers across the national security enterprise.
- Drove worldwide crisis integration of intelligence resources ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leveraging disparate manpower, information system and policy and doctrinal resources across the combatant commands, military service components, combat support agencies, and military reserve elements to prepare foundational intelligence to drive Ukrainian operations post-invasion, resulting in the halting and roll back of Russian operations.
- Spearheaded successful effort to better integrate partner intelligence services into the DoD general military intelligence enterprise.
- Helped launch transition to more modern systems while ensuring fight tonight safeguards remain in place.
Intelligence Officer / Mission Manager
Joint Chiefs of Staff (This is a federal job)
06.2018 - 03.2021
- Principal Joint Staff intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance space analyst.
- Authored 2018 space portion of the Joint Military Net Assessment in conjunction with congressional-mandated 1601d study, successfully championing a strategic shift to proliferated Low Earth Orbit space architectures at the DoD's Joint Requirements Oversight Council, JROC.
- Represented the Joint Staff Intelligence Director on Space Operational Planning Team, contributing to changes to the 2018 and 2019 National Defense Authorization Acts, 2017 Unified Command Plan, various PLANORDs and decisive Chairman's Memos that resulted in the stand up of the US Space Force, USSPACECOM and Space Development Agency
- Supported Senate confirmations for Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Commander, USSPACECOM.
- Finalized Joint Staff manpower recommendations for new USSPACECOM Joint Intelligence Operations Center and led Joint Manpower Validation Board effort.
- DoD-Intelligence Community liaison/gatekeeper for space topics between all Title-10 and Title-50 programs.
- Investigated and advocated for DoD Sensor-to-Shooter requirements, leading to doctrinal definitions for 'tactical edge' and provided DoD position on commercial license applications.
- Served as lead functional warning officer in the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC) during COViD-19 pandemic.
- AF Space 100 & 200 Graduate.
Counterterrorism / Innovation All-Source Analyst
Joint Special Operations Command (This is a federal job)
06.2017 - 06.2018
- Innovation and Africa area of responsibility analyst.
- Led discovery and development of two ISIS transregional networks
- Authored and executed two Action Proposals that orchestrated non-kinetic, kinetic, law enforcement, cyber and foreign partner-enabled simultaneous effects, targeting ISIS high-value individuals, physical locations, online, commercial, and financial entities and facilitation routes that helped destroy ISIS's virtual caliphate, crippling its parallel physical one in the Levant.
- Successfully formed/led joint interagency and foreign partner community-of-interest with 18 coalition nations to establish intelligence baseline to support plan; identified collection gaps and drove action arm requirements.
- Awarded Joint Staff Civilian Achievement Medal.
Intelligence Officer / Branch Chief / Indications and Warning Officer
United States Africa Command (This is a federal job)
01.2014 - 06.2017
- Watch Officer at the Joint Operations Center of USAFRICOM.
- Sole civilian intelligence officer in the command's Joint Operations Center
- Focal point for crisis command response during 13 NOV 2015 Paris attacks and 16 SEP 2015 coup in Burkina Faso.
- Managed a team of highly regarded junior officers and senior NCO's across a diverse range of current intelligence and high operational tempo kinetic missions, utilizing sophisticated technical and human intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.
- Provided daily update briefs to command staff as briefer and public speaker, while successfully integrating multiple, disparate informational streams to provide real-time, coherent situational awareness to senior decision makers.
- Provided technical engineering support/logistics guidance during 2015 Operation UNITED ASSISTANCE, USAFRICOM's response to Liberia's Ebola crisis.
- Provided assessments of airfield and port capabilities as well as helped optimize local contractor and navy SEABEE resources for Ebola Treatment Unit build-out in partnership with USAID, in difficult, rudimentary conditions on extremely compressed timelines with high public visibility/pressure at the time.
- Presaged DoD efforts during COViD-19.
Nuclear Physcist/Engineer
United States Department of Defense (This is a federal job)
12.2011 - 01.2014
- Nuclear weapons, arms control and international safeguards analyst for DoD.
- Participated in New-START inspections to Russia as part of Defense Threat Reduction Agency teams; examined Russian deployed nuclear warheads and strategic platforms including intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines and associated facilities.
- Forged collegial, productive relationships with Russian counterparts while working in difficult weather conditions in oftentimes remote, austere environments for extended periods of time.
- Worked within Russian facilities and aircraft with sensitive Russian instrumentation/equipment while reciprocating training with counterparts
- Familiar with Russian radiation safety practices with some Russian language proficiency.
- Subject matter expert on sensitive nuclear and conventionally powered autonomous systems, both terrestrial and orbital.
- Served as liaison between DoD and academia on diverse range of nuclear, space/counterspace and related technical issues.
Staff Researcher/Graduate Research Assistant
University of Virginia
08.2011 - 01.2014
- Research Physicist/Graduate Student for the Department of Physics's Neutron a, b (Nab) research collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS).
- Development, deployment and operation of the Nab spectrometer on the fundamental physics beamline at SNS with the goal of determining the coupling constants a, the neutrino-electron correlation coefficient and b, the Fierz interference term as defined in Jackson's parameterized differential decay rate of free neutrons.
- These measurements serve to resolve discrepancies in the neutron decay world data set and allow for the higher precision extraction of the Vud element of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, with strong implications to cosmology/astrophysics.
- Experience designing, building, testing, calibrating, validating and operating high-voltage, high-vacuum and high-magnetic-field systems, detectors and instrumentation.
- Significant practical mechanical, electrical and software experience - from machining and milling to very high tolerances, to soldering and wringing up components to programming microcontrollers and putting together user-friendly LabVIEW graphical user interfaces.
Nuclear Physicist/Engineer
United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency
08.2007 - 12.2011
- .Physical scientist, nuclear engineer, and project manager within the Department for Safeguards Technical Support (SGTS) section.
- 2009 IAEA Distinguished Service Award.
- Technical development, construction, deployment, calibration, validation and in-situ maintenance of remotely-monitored nuclear non-destructive assay systems in Ukraine, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Lithuania, Algeria, Canada and others.
- Extensive experience operating within austere, high radiation environments from the middle-of-the-desert to the sub-artic; facilities such as Chernobyl (Ukraine), es-Salaam (Ain Oussera, Algeria), Ignalina (Lithuania) and Tokai (Japan).
- Work always utilized teams of international colleagues, within international facilities, foreign equipment and often diverse foreign standard operating procedures.
- Work often entailed difficult fine-motor-skill electrical and mechanical work or remote manipulation within confined, radioactively contaminated, and high background flux environments beneath layers of protective clothing and occasionally with external air.
- Field calibration and diagnosis of detectors or instrumentation entailed rapid rule-of-thumb, order-of-magnitude extemporaneous mental calculations of flux magnitudes, electrical currents, etc.
- Responsible for the development and authorization of several Category-A (cleared for inspection use and reporting) NDA systems.
- Conducted support studies involving Monte Carlo transport code calculations while authoring numerous technical trip reports, user manuals and checklist procedures.
- Significant practical mechanical, electrical and software experience - from machining and milling metal, to soldering and wringing up components to programming microcontrollers and Python back-ends to putting together graphical user interfaces.
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Tennessee / Oak Ridge National Laboratory
12.2004 - 05.2008
- .Graduate student researcher with University of Tennessee Space Institute's (UTSI) Aircraft Real-Time Parameter Identification (RTPID) study effort with NASA-Arnold Engineering Development Complex
- UTSI research focused on development and implementation of System IDentification Programs for AirCraft (SIDPAC) algorithms in the institute's modified Ryan Navion variable stability and control aircraft, requiring personally test flying the airframe from Tullahoma.
- Research resulted in the development RTPID applications for military and commercial aircraft, allowing fly-by-wire systems to adapt to control surface or engine failures, supporting pilot mitigation and enhancing safety of flight.
- Separately in parallel was undergraduate research for Oak Ridge National Laboratory's computational center.
- Conducted criticality safety analysis of spent fuel transportation casks in order to assess possible actinide burn up credit for application to future NRC regulations regarding cask packing.
- Validation of the International Handbook of evaluation criticality safety benchmark experiments with SCALE 5.
Nuclear Engineer
United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (This is a federal job)
01.2005 - 01.2007
- Nuclear Safety Professional Development Program, nuclear engineer within NRC's Office of Nuclear Security and Incidence Response, Division of Emergency Preparedness.
- Helped coordinate NRC support of Nuclear Energy Institute's Phase 3 program for security-based event emergency preparedness drills to lead to graded industry exercises, post 9-11.
- Participated in inspection of biennial EP exercises.
Physical Scientist / Nuclear Engineer
Gamma Engineering Corporation
05.2003 - 12.2004
- Principal physicist and nuclear engineer in the research and development of silicon carbide composites for use as a nuclear fuel cladding in then current and next generation light water reactors at small nuclear start-up.
- Performed neutronics and reactivity calculations for various assembly configurations and rod designs utilizing both analytical and numerical techniques along with the development of new fuel cycle management to take advantage of increases in fuel burn-up.
Undergraduate Researcher, National Undergraduate Fellow
University of Maryland / Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
03.2001 - 05.2003
- Undergraduate researcher with the Maryland Centrifugal Experiment (MCX)
- Helped develop and construct magnetic confinement experiment for rotational plasmas
- Assisted with the design and construction of high-vacuum, high-voltage systems and advanced machine shop techniques and computer programming with LabVIEW
- Work continued at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory under a national undergraduate fellowship with a focus on computational physics; modeling toroidal plasmas within the Alcator-CMOD and National Spherical Torus Experiment and utilizing GS2 and GYRO codes
- Assisted in the decommissioning of the lab's Tokomak Fusion Test Reactor.
Education
Doctorate degree - Science, Technology and Society (STS)
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA05.2028
Master's degree - Physics
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TNMaster's degree - Nuclear Engineering
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TNBachelor's degree - Physics
University of Maryland
College Park, MDBachelor's degree - Nuclear Engineering
University of Maryland
College Park, MDHigh school diploma or equivalent - Physics
Archbishop Spalding High School
Severn, MDSkills
- Leadership Team Building
- Organizational Leadership
- Strategic Planning
- Operational Excellence
- Crisis Management
- Innovation and Creativity
- Program Management
- Negotiation
Additional Information
National Intelligence Professional Award; Joint Civilian Commendation Award; Joint Civilian Service Achievement Award w/ Oak Leaves; IAEA Distinguished Service Award; Fairfax County, Virginia Candidate for School Board
Affiliations
- Alpha Gamma Rho (National Agricultural Fraternity) - Alumni Board Member
- Sigma Pi Sigma (Physics Honor Society) - Member
- Alpha Nu Sigma (Nuclear Engineering Honor Society) - Member
- Pi Mu Epsilon (Mathematics Honor Society) - Member
- Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association - Member
- Freemason - Master Mason
Desired Locations
ALL, ALL, United States
Job Related Training
- Professional Engineer's License, Nuclear (State of Virginia, 2021)
- Commercial Pilot, Intrument (FAA, 2024)
- Advanced Open Water SCUBA Diver (PADI/NAUI, 2023)
- General Aviation Test Pilot Course (Piston2Jet, Inc, 2024)
- Nuclear & Space Plasma Course (PPPL, 2002)
- Space 100, 200 (USAF NSSI, 2019)
- Nuclear Weapons Assembly/Disassembly Course (PANTEX, 2012)
- Underground Nuclear Weapons Testing Orientation (NTS, 2013)
- Fundamentals of Nuclear Laser Enrichment (LLNL, 2012)
- Gas Centrifuge Technology Course (ORNL, 2012)
- Certified Defense All-Source Analyst II (DIA, 2024)
Dsn
703-571-9541
Availability
Permanent, Full-time
References
- HON Dr. Kathleen Hicks, Department of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, joseph.clearfield@sd.mil
- Ms. Charlotte Fallon, Defense Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Officer, fallon@gmail.com
- Col. Sean Nowlan, USA (RET), Joint Special Operations Command, Intelligence Director, Nowlansc@gordias.cc
- Dr. Adam Shephard, United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Safeguards Inspector, ashephard@gmail.com
- Mr. Chris Cavey, State of Maryland, Campaign Manager / Consultant, caveyc@gmail.com
- HON Ronald Moultrie, Department of Defense, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, 202-809-9976, dmelecki@betterangelssociety.org
- Dr. Thierry Pochet, U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, Unit Head, 0114369911342501, t.pochet@iaea.org
Certification
Professional Engineer (Nuclear)
Certified Defense All-Source Analyst I
Private Pilot
Hobbies
Pilot, SCUBE Diver
Timeline
President's Daily Briefer
Office of the Director for National Intelligence (This is a federal job)
01.2023 - Current
Intelligence Officer / Mission Manager
Defense Intelligence Agency (This is a federal job)
03.2021 - 01.2023
Intelligence Officer / Mission Manager
Joint Chiefs of Staff (This is a federal job)
06.2018 - 03.2021
Counterterrorism / Innovation All-Source Analyst
Joint Special Operations Command (This is a federal job)
06.2017 - 06.2018
Intelligence Officer / Branch Chief / Indications and Warning Officer
United States Africa Command (This is a federal job)
01.2014 - 06.2017
Nuclear Physcist/Engineer
United States Department of Defense (This is a federal job)
12.2011 - 01.2014
Staff Researcher/Graduate Research Assistant
University of Virginia
08.2011 - 01.2014
Nuclear Physicist/Engineer
United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency
08.2007 - 12.2011
Nuclear Engineer
United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (This is a federal job)
01.2005 - 01.2007
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Tennessee / Oak Ridge National Laboratory
12.2004 - 05.2008
Physical Scientist / Nuclear Engineer
Gamma Engineering Corporation
05.2003 - 12.2004
Undergraduate Researcher, National Undergraduate Fellow
University of Maryland / Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
03.2001 - 05.2003
Doctorate degree - Science, Technology and Society (STS)
Virginia Tech
Master's degree - Physics
University of Tennessee
Master's degree - Nuclear Engineering
University of Tennessee
Bachelor's degree - Physics
University of Maryland
Bachelor's degree - Nuclear Engineering
University of Maryland
High school diploma or equivalent - Physics
Archbishop Spalding High School
Professional Engineer (Nuclear)
Certified Defense All-Source Analyst I
Private Pilot
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