Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Jason Dempsey, President

Jason Dempsey, PhD, is one of the nation’s leading experts on military demographics and civilian-military relations and the author of Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations.

Jason began his work with veterans while serving as a White House Fellow, where he worked to take the broad concept of military family support and turn it into Joining Forces, First Lady Obama and Dr. Biden’s comprehensive national initiative to support service members and their families. He also coordinated the efforts of 17 government agencies working to improve the lives of military families under Presidential Study Directive 9: Strengthening Our Military Families, and created an Interagency Data Group to increase information sharing and analysis among government agencies to better design veteran transition services and increase post-service employment opportunities for America’s veterans.  

Jason spent 22 years in the United States Army, where he served as an infantry officer with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He last served as special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military advisor to the President of the United States. While working for the Chairman, Jason oversaw outreach to military community non-profits and conceived and drafted the Call to Continued Service, a statement signed by all of the Joint Chiefs imploring service members to continued service to the nation as veterans. 

He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, and earned his doctorate in political science from Columbia University.