Elizabeth Walker

Elizabeth Walker is a distinguished senior executive with more than 30 years of leadership across the U.S. Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, and Department of the Air Force. A former Naval Officer, she has built a career defined by bold transformation, strategic vision, and the ability to guide complex organizations through periods of rapid and consequential change.

Currently, Elizabeth serves as Founder and Principal Consultant of Orion Innovations LLC, where she advises small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and foundations on national security strategy, organizational effectiveness, and emerging threat landscapes. She draws on her extensive background in defense and intelligence to help clients define their value proposition, develop compelling proposals, and strengthen their operational integration.

Prior to founding Orion Innovations LLC, Elizabeth served as the Command Integration and Transformation Officer for NORAD and USNORTHCOM, chartered as a senior executive advisor to the Commander. In this role, she identified sweeping modernization opportunities across people, process, and technology, securing multi-million-dollar funding for implementation, software solutions, and missionfocused experimentation. She led Homeland Defense initiatives in data-driven decision making and served as a senior advisor on artificial intelligence strategy, Arctic operations requirements, and the integration of counter-unmanned aircraft systems (cUAS) and other emerging threats into command plans.

Her tenure at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) spanned more than two decades of increasingly senior leadership. As Director of GEOINT Assurance Integration, she led a cross-functional team focused on identifying adversary threats to national security data and piloting policy, tradecraft, and technology solutions to protect critical equities. She managed a $10 million agile software budget and oversaw the integration of commercial capabilities into NGA’s IT baseline and operations. Concurrently, as Program Manager for Data Access and Data Integrity, she architected and managed a $100 million-plus, five-year program schedule spanning 12 key stakeholder organizations, providing regular risk assessments and strategic updates to agency senior leadership.

As Director of the NGA Support Team, Elizabeth led more than 170 government, military, and contractor personnel across Hawaii, Japan, and South Korea, delivering direct geospatial intelligence support to USINDOPACOM and U.S. Forces Korea and U.S. Forces Japan. She developed innovative talent recruitment and retention strategies and collaborated with command leadership on infrastructure investments to sustain operations in contested environments.

Earlier in her NGA career, Elizabeth served as GEOINT Mission Manager for Eurasia, where she defined the agency’s strategic direction in response to a resurgent Russia, drove resource investments through the GEOINT Program of Analysis, and championed the adoption of AI/ML analytic methodologies across the Intelligence Community. She represented NGA in senior IC and DoD forums including the Russia Strategic Initiative, ODNI Russia Integration Group, and Russia Warning Council.

Elizabeth is recognized for her executive communication skills, her ability to align resources to strategic priorities, and her consistent record of delivering results in high-stakes, resource-constrained environments. She is a sought-after advisor on the intersection of emerging technology, national security, and organizational transformation.