Jon Sather

Jon Sather Served our country for nearly 30 years, the past 25 with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in numerous leadership, management and line positions.  He is a retired member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, the leadership team that guides CIA activities around the globe.

Mr. Sather’s professional experience is derived from over two decades of leading skilled, motivated and multidisciplinary teams focused on solving challenges of unprecedented complexity.  He has worked and led in environments of high physical, geopolitical, and organizational risk and resiliency.

Jon has led large globally dispersed teams engaged in complex human and technical espionage operations in dangerous situations under circumstances of high ambiguity and time pressure. He served 10 years in the foreign field in CIA service in Europe and the Former Soviet Union, with extensive additional mission experience with most other geographic areas. He served as a CIA Chief of Station (COS) and senior US Intelligence Community representative in the foreign field. At CIA headquarters, Mr. Sather retired from the top tier of the senior leadership team in CIA that directs world-wide operations, as the Director of CIA’s Counterproliferation Center (CPC) within the Directorate of Operations. During his tenure as Director, CPC developed world-wide capability to adeptly address nuclear and bio/chemical threats. As such, he served as the CIA’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Mission Manager, targeting efforts by our adversaries to proliferate or acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; a threat which represents the gravest existential security vulnerability faced by our country and its principles.

He has led large-scale components staffed by highly skilled personnel, and managed critical mission centers and multi-million dollar budgets while bringing together diverse talent in pursuit of common goals and imperatives. He forged and sustained productive relationships with senior US intelligence officials, military leadership, corporate executives, senior diplomatic officials and law enforcement agencies, and created extensive and powerful partnerships with our foreign colleagues.

Sather has been recognized as an exceptional clandestine operations officer, leader, communicator, team-builder, mentor; candid, forthright and conversational briefer – friend and colleague, and worked with and learned from marvelous and amazingly talented people every day.