Radha Plumb

Dr. Radha Plumb is the 2nd Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO) at the Department of Defense, succeeding Dr. Craig Martell in this role in April 2024.

In announcing her appointment, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, “Dr. Plumb’s technical expertise and strategic acumen will enhance the CDAO’s innovative efforts, and help accelerate the DoD’s adoption of data, analytics, and AI to generate decision advantage from the boardroom to the battlefield.”

In her prior role as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. Plumb was responsible to the Under Secretary of Defense for all matters pertaining to acquisition; contract administration; logistics and materiel readiness; installations and environment; operational energy; chemical, biological, and nuclear defense; the acquisition workforce; and the defense industrial base. Since joining the DOD in 2021, she also served as Senior Advisor/Deputy Director (Acting) of Administration & Management, and Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary.

Dr. Plumb served in senior roles in the private sector with Google, as Director, Trust & Safety, and with Facebook in several roles, including Global Head of Policy Analysis, Head of Product-Policy Research, and Research Lead on User Safety and Risk Management. She previously was a Senior Economist at the Rand Corporation.

Before her private sector work, she served the Department of Energy as a Deputy Chief of Staff and the National Security Council as Director of Defense Personnel, Readiness, and Partnerships. She also worked in the Department of Defense, Office of Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict, as the Chief of Staff and Policy Advisor to the Assistant Secretary.

Dr. Plumb earned her BS in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her PhD in Economics from Princeton University. Early in her career, she was an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at Harvard.