Mr. Nathan Christensen joined the United States Naval Postgraduate School in 2011 as a Faculty Associate and is the Deputy Director for Global ECCO (Education Collaboration Community Online), sponsored by the Regional Defense Fellowship Program (RDFP) under the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Global ECCO utilizes the full capabilities of NPS in a security cooperation mission, reaching out to partner countries to build sustainable capacity in the spirit of “Academic Diplomacy”.

Prior to joining NPS, he spent 10 years developing and executing strategy and business development for large multi-national organizations. Additionally, he employed competitive intelligence training and expertise to make organizations more competitive relative to their environment and stakeholders: customers, competitors, distributors, technologies and macro-economic data etc. His areas of research interest include fiscal transparency/anti-corruption as well as counter terrorism & border security. He has developed and implemented DoS & DoD engagements on behalf of NPS in Brazil, Chile, India and Germany. He worked closely with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to create & provide in-residence Border Security short courses for the Egyptian Ministries of Defense, Interior & Finance. This program was successfully expanded to Tunisia, Algeria & Morocco.

After working in Chicago, Amsterdam and Los Angeles, Mr. Christensen moved to Monterey, California to join the NPS team. His responsibilities include international outreach and partnering efforts, program management, and leveraging opportunities to match academic and research capability & resources across Department of Defense, State Department, NATO and U.N. partner capacity building goals and objectives.

Mr. Christensen received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with a Minor in Spanish Language from Colorado State University in 1998 and received his MBA in International Management from Thunderbird in 2001. Additionally, he is fluent in Portuguese and proficient in Spanish.