Laura Taylor-Kale is a senior fellow for geoeconomics and defense at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) where she conducts research on economic security and defense industrial policy and investments.
From 2023 to 2025, Dr. Taylor-Kale served as the first presidentially-appointed, senate-confirmed assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy. In this role, she led all defense industrial strategy, investments, and planning, including the Defense Production Act and industrial base investments, supply chain resilience, small business programs, international defense industrial cooperation, and economic security and review of domestic mergers and acquisitions and foreign investments (CFIUS). She led the Department of Defense in developing and publishing the first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy and Implementation Plan. During her tenure, she led the expansion of strategic investments in rare earth elements, critical and strategic materials, solid rocket motors, and other upstream supply chain materials. To further accelerate investment in the Defense Industrial Base, Dr. Taylor-Kale launched the DoD’s largest other transaction contracting vehicle, the Defense Industrial Base Consortium. Under her leadership, the Office of Industrial Base Policy awarded a record of $3.3 billion of grants to manufacturing and defense industrial supply chain businesses through the Defense Production Act and the Industrial Base Fund. Additionally, she established the first Board of Directors for the strategic and critical materials for the National Defense Stockpile.
Previously, Dr. Taylor-Kale was fellow for innovation and economic competitiveness at CFR. She also served as a CFR international affairs fellow from 2017 to 2018, when she was also deputy director of CFR’s Independent Task Force on the future of the U.S. workforce and co-author of the Task Force’s published report, The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century.
Dr. Taylor-Kale has extensive experience in finance, business, economic policy and managing in complex organizations. As deputy assistant secretary for manufacturing in the international trade administration in the Department of Commerce, she led a team of trade policy professionals in breaking barriers in the export of U.S. manufactured goods around the world. She has also held positions at the World Bank and the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Dr. Taylor-Kale began her career in the U.S. Department of State serving as a career foreign service officer (diplomat) in India, Cote D’Ivoire, Afghanistan, the Executive Board of the World Bank, and the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.
Dr. Taylor-Kale is the founder and CEO of Strategic Capital Advisory LLC, an advisory firm working with venture capital firm, defense, and deep technology companies. In 2018, she was a Zhi-Zhing Eisenhower fellow in China where she studied Chinese technology innovation in artificial intelligence. She holds a BA in economics from Smith College, an MPA from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and an MBA in finance and management from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Honored as an “Engineer of the Future” in 2021, she has a PhD in management science and engineering with a concentration in organizations, technology and entrepreneurship from Stanford University’s School of Engineering. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.