Charles Hooper

Lieutenant General (Retired) Charles "Hoop" Hooper is known as an agile, resilient, and high-impact leader, who offers an uncommon blend of strategy and partnership development, disciplined leadership, and operational expertise – supplemented by global insight and deep cross-cultural experience. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts on China’s military and defense industries, U.S.-China military relations, U.S. security cooperation and financial assistance, and foreign military sales.   Hoop has over 30 years of experience in security policy formulation and execution; strategic intelligence; military diplomacy; sensitive negotiations; education, and transformational leadership of large, complex organizations. He has had operational assignments with the 25th Infantry and 82nd Airborne Divisions, taught Chinese foreign policy at the Naval Postgraduate School, served as the senior China policy official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the senior DOD strategist and planner for U.S. Africa Command, and the senior U.S. military officer in Egypt.  He is a fluent Chinese linguist who served seven years in Beijing culminating with his assignment as U.S. defense attaché to China, 2007-2009. He was also a post-graduate research fellow at the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs studying U.S. China military relations. In his final military assignment, Hoop was director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, responsible for the overseas sale of all weapons, military equipment, support services, and training packages for the United States Government.  Among his numerous honors, Hoop was awarded the National Defense Medal by the French Government and was the first Army student-officer and first Harvard Kennedy School of Government student selected to give a Harvard University Graduate Student Commencement Address. He is a member of MENSA and the Council on Foreign Relations.