Colonel Wes Spurlock

Senior Advisor to the Director, Office of Strategic Capital

U.S. Department of Defense

Wes Spurlock is the Senior Advisor to the Director for the newly established Office of Strategic Capital at the Department of Defense. In this role, he is responsible for identifying innovative financing approaches to help attract and scale private capital towards the development of technologies critical to the United States and its allies. Additionally, he is responsible for interagency, congressional, and private sector engagement.

Prior to this Wes was the Chief Risk Officer at AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force. In that role he was responsible for all Due Diligence and Know Your Client (KYC) processes across the more than 1,800 companies in AFWERX’s $1 billion-dollar investment portfolio.

Wes also served as a White House Fellow assigned to the International Development Finance.

Corporation (DFC) and then the Domestic Policy Council (DPC). At DFC, he was responsible for interagency coordination of the Defense Production Act (DPA) COVID-19 response and served as the Managing Director for DFC’s European investment portfolio. In his role at DPC Wes was a Senior Advisor to the Domestic Policy Advisor and was responsible for rapidly addressing care for unaccompanied children at the southwest border and the unaccompanied children exfiltrated from Afghanistan.

From 2015-2017 he served as the Military Aide to the President of the United States. In that capacity he was responsible for the Presidential Emergency Satchel (“nuclear football”) & personally assisting POTUS in implementing command and control of the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Additionally, in that role, he served as the White House Military Office Operations Officer, and was responsible for overseeing all operational matters affecting Presidential support for 2,300 military personnel around the world.

He has commanded at the Squadron level where he was responsible for standing up the first operational KC-46 unit for the Air Force and leading the operational test and evaluation process for the Air Force’s newest aircraft. His military staff assignments include serving as the Executive Officer to the Commander of the Air Force Operations Group and the Chief Budget Analyst for Undergraduate Flying Training at the Pentagon.

Wes is a native of California and was commissioned in the Air Force upon graduation from the United States Air Force Academy in 2004. He is a command pilot with more than 3,100 flight hours in the T-6, T-1A, KC-10, KC-135 & KC-46, including over 600 combat hours.