Kenneth Braithwaite

Kenneth Braithwaite served as 77th Secretary of the Navy and is the former US Ambassador to Norway. He regularly speaks on leadership, geopolitics and negotiation.

Braithwaite joined the Naval Reserve in 1993,  after being Chief of Public Affairs at the Philadelphia Naval Base. There, he commanded Navy Combat Camera Atlantic, where he deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Later on, he became the first commander of Joint Public Affairs Support Element-Joint Forces Command, where he deployed for disaster relief in Pakistan. Initially promoted to Rear Admiral in 2007, he then served as the first Vice Chief of Information until retiring from the Navy in 2011.

Following subsequent roles in the private sector, he was appointed US ambassador to Norway by President Trump. In 2020, he was made US Secretary of the Navy under the same administration. During his time as Secretary of the Navy, Braithwaite orchestrated the first ever TriService Maritime Strategy, aligning the Navy, Marine Corps and the Coast Guard with the National Defense Strategy, and he also led the department through Covid-19, maintaining readiness whilst protecting the services personnel.

As Secretary of the Navy, Braithwaite further produced the first ever US Navy Strategy for the Arctic, expanding US military horizons. He similarly stressed the importance of culture, thereby strengthening the Navy’s ties to its history through supporting a new National Museum of the United States Navy and naming the new Constellation-class frigates after the US Navy’s first frigates.

In the private sector, Kenneth Braithwaite has held executive roles in the health care and petroleum industries. He currently works with Silicon Valley Bank, Kongsberg Defence and Summa Equity as Senior Geopolitical Advisor, whilst sitting on the board of Tritium LTD, a company producing the next generation of EV chargers and Atom Computing, one of the leading technologies around quantum computing. Additionally, Braithwaite serves as a Fellow of the NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany and as an Adjunct Professor at Kristiania University in Oslo, Norway.