Morgan Poyant is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. She is an integrator and convener bridging government and the private sector in defense, diplomacy and development through strategy-grounded, data-driven policy and programs. She spent over 10 years supporting the Department of State (DOS) and Department of Defense (DOD) focused on counterterrorism, border security, regional security institutions, and security assistance in Africa. Through multiple positions and engagements across both departments she honed her skills in driving interagency and multinational processes to address emerging threats and opportunities.
Ms. Poyant co-founded 413, an SBA-certified HUBZone and Woman-Owned Small Business that brings monitoring and evaluation, analytics, and a spectrum of technical and institutional support to DOS and DOD. She served as the Chief Operating Officer and Co-Owner from start up to significant scale up. She co-designed and led an innovative exercise and evaluation program at DOS and provided subject matter expertise for trainings, assessments, and analytics across DOS and DOD clients.
Prior to co-founding 413, Morgan served in a contract role supporting State’s Bureau for African Affairs, Office of Regional Peace and Security. In this role- the first of its kind- she worked to effectively align U.S. resources for security and border management programming in Africa, accounting for interagency equities, allies, partners, and partner-driven initiatives. She developed and disseminated products that revealed gaps and opportunities for smart, efficient investments in the defense, security, civilian and development sectors in the Sahel, North Africa, and East Africa, building a vast global community of interest and information sharing. She facilitated interagency integration into large-scale DOD field exercises in Africa and worked across embassies and agencies to build cooperative mechanisms on G5 Sahel engagement and counter-ISIS efforts in Mozambique.
Ms. Poyant’s previous analytical work focused on building partner capacity programs and special operations engagements in Africa and in supporting wargaming and exercises throughout DOD. She served as a Program Administrator for border security and interagency initiatives in the Governor of Arizona’s office. Ms. Poyant began her career in the development and humanitarian spaces at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and a public-health focused non-governmental organization, with work predominantly focused on Africa.
Ms. Poyant is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA- Political Science) and The Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (MA-International Relations.)