As part of our Graduate Fellowship Program, the Foundation established the Alumni of the Year Award in 2022. The Award recognizes an alum who has demonstrated a commitment to public service, benefited the public good, and personifies the leadership qualities that the Rumsfelds hoped to encourage through the Fellowship's efforts. (Read more here about our 2023 awardee and 2022 awardee.)
This fall, the Foundation was delighted to award the 2024 Alumna of the Year Award to Dr. Meg Reiss.
Meet Meg:
Meg was nominated for her active involvement in the program’s network, her demonstrated commitment to public service and her efforts in protecting U.S. national security.
Meg is currently the founder and CEO of SolidIntel Inc., an early-stage venture-backed generative AI company working to de-risk supply chains in support of U.S. national security. She is concurrently a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy.
After the Rumsfeld Foundation supported her graduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, Meg served as a National Security Fellow both in the Office of Senator Ben Sasse and at the R Street Institute. She later joined Senator Mitt Romney’s staff as his National Security Policy Advisor.
While overseeing Senator Romney’s national security and foreign policy portfolios, Meg drafted and negotiated the final passage of Senator Romney’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022, directing the White House to develop a comprehensive strategy vis-à-vis China and to convene outside experts from the private sector, academia and think tanks to review U.S.-China strategy and offer additional recommendations.
Beyond her work in the private sector and government, Meg has served as a mentor to rising national security professionals in the Graduate Fellowship Network. “Meg has become a valued mentor and source of guidance to many younger students and recent graduates, including numerous other Rumsfeld Fellows. She embodies the virtues and aspirations of the Rumsfeld Graduate Fellowship,” observed her Fellowship Adviser and nominator. Meg currently serves on the Graduate Fellowship’s 2024-26 Alumni Leadership Council, advising Foundation leadership and contributing to the network’s further development.
At the recent 2024 Graduate Fellowship Conference, held over September 12th-13th in Washington, D.C., the Foundation celebrated the 16th academic year of the Graduate Fellowship Program. During the award presentation at the conference’s closing dinner, attendees heard from Meg and viewed congratulatory recorded remarks from her program Adviser and her former boss, Senator Mitt Romney.
“As my National Security Policy Advisor over several years, Dr. Reiss played an indispensable role in overseeing my national security and foreign policy portfolios. She was instrumental in securing several of my initiatives to address the growing China threat, including an effort to push the administration to develop a comprehensive China strategy. I'm deeply grateful for her efforts and look forward to seeing what she accomplishes now in the private sector as a noted entrepreneur,” remarked Senator Romney.
In her acceptance speech, Meg reflected on Secretary Rumsfeld’s vision for the program and the public service commitments shared among members of the Graduate Fellowship Network. “Secretary Rumsfeld was at the center of making really, really tough strategic choices during the Bush administration. But he elevated, through this Foundation, a focus on public service and Central Asia,” observed Meg. “We're all Fellows because we have an interest in public service, one way or another. We're academia. We're government. We're private sector. But we're all public service. We're all trying to impact change from some area that we believe in deeply.”