Bess Dopkeen

Bess Dopkeen is a senior analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense/Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation. She is the Program Manager for the Cost Assessment Data Enterprise, the Department’s unified initiative to collect, organize and use cost data across the cost community, and leads the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition’s Big Data initiative. Bess works on the Department’s independent cost estimates of major acquisition programs and other initiatives including the Secretary’s satellite-efficiency project and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s national labs labor-cost analysis. Previously, she served as an acquisitions analyst for the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics).

Bess came to Washington as a Tufts University Dutko Fellow, working on trade and international development projects at an NGO. She has been a Truman National Security Project Fellow since 2009, and previously co-chaired their DoD group. Bess received a B.A. in Political Science from Tufts, and a M.S. in National Resource Strategy from the Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy (formerly the Industrial College of the Armed Forces) at National Defense University, where she was a distinguished graduate.