Dr. Joseph A. (Jae) Engelbrecht Jr. is President and CEO of Engelbrecht Associates LLC, and an Advisor and former Partner at Toffler Associates. He advises senior executives on practical strategies for business and government for mission success. Dr. Engelbrecht served in the U.S. Air Force through the rank of Colonel. As an intelligence officer and platoon leader in Vietnam, he led the “Bottleneck” interdiction campaign to slow and destroy traffic on the Ho Chi Min trail. Later he led a multi-staged effort to track tank convoys at night and feed data to recce and “Wolf FACs” to attack armor hidden under canopy by day. He aided Linebacker II targeting before redeploying to Thailand. He also served as an aide-de-camp in Taiwan, a missile and senior standardization-evaluation commander, an Air Force planner, an international political affairs officer, a Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative and negotiator, and a war college professor. He was a leader of the SPACECAST 2030 study. Dr. Engelbrecht was the research director of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s 2025 Study. His 2025 teams identified 43 new capabilities and the services eventually funded over 90%. Recognizing the increasing value of knowledge systems, study leaders recommended the USAF expand its vision of Global Reach and Power to include Global Vigilance. As a JCS representative, he advised the U.S. delegation and subsequently led teams negotiating the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), and START II, and then hopped between Geneva, Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, Tokyo, and Washington to devise ways for former Soviet Union states to dismantle their arsenals. He was the U.S. government and JCS policy lead on the first START inspection. President George H.W. Bush commended him, and he became one of the first non-diplomats decorated by the Secretary of State. Next, Jae joined Alvin and Heidi Toffler, to form Toffler Associates, a strategic advisory firm that helps CEOs, senior executives and general/flag officers lead their organizations to success in a rapidly changing market and environment. Jae Engelbrecht has over 40 years of experience being at the bifurcation point of change and advising executives on how to lead, grow and succeed in new, emerging conditions. He has advised senior executives in business and government in the United States and around the globe. In the early 1990’s, he advised Bell company (now Verizon) executives on the impact of the Internet when much of their business ran on mainframes. He created a future market assessment to quantify the value of modular repairable satellites, a decade before the technology was viable. He also convinced another aerospace giant to lean forward on their technical design for a new satellite constellation to meet emerging customer needs; the firm won the multi-billion-dollar competition. Before “cyber” entered our lexicon, he devised a process for mitigating e-risk or the loss of business caused by cyber-attack or disruption for DARPA. Anticipating a 911 type attack, he advised Intelligence Agencies on the changing security environment and served with a panel commissioned by the Secretary of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director to design a new remote sensing strategy for the United States. After 911, every U.S. intelligence agency sought Jae’s advice. He served as executive coach and leadership counsel for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He led the development of a global posture strategy for the National Security Agency that created the initiative to develop a U.S. Cyber Command. Trying to understand how he recognized emerging issues, the CIA asked his team to identify the top 20 issues not on their radar without acknowledging their current efforts; each of the issues Jae highlighted inaugurated new agency initiatives. Anticipating the challenges later posed by conflicts in the Middle East, he advised the Commandant of the Marine Corps on how to build “deep coalitions” between governments, global firms, nongovernmental organizations, military elements, and local organizations to rapidly adapt and shape approaches for emerging problems that span boundaries and traditional lanes in the road to the future. Dr. Engelbrecht earned a B.A. in east Asian history and Chinese from the University of Maryland, a M.A. in Public Administration from the University of Northern Colorado, a Master of Philosophy and a Ph.D. in international relations and political science from Columbia University. He completed the leadership and executive development program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dr. Engelbrecht is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the World Futures Society and life member of the Air Force Association and the National Eagle Scout Association. He is the author of Alternate Futures for 2025 and multiple articles including in Space Imaging, Earth Imaging Journal, Military Operations Research Society (MORS), Interfaces, Airpower Journal (Netherlands), Symposium on Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (Canada) and has been interviewed for such publications as Fortune, The Washington Post, and Generation (Turkey). Dr. Engelbrecht has assessed leadership, executive decision making, and strategy processes and advised executives at organizations including Verizon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Harris, Levi, 3M, XEROX, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Motorola, HP, Microsoft, AT&T, USPS, the GAO, Army Corps of Engineers, each of the U.S. military services and the top seven U.S. intelligence agencies as well as dozens of non-profits and non-governmental organizations.
