Mark Gorak
Department of Defense Director of Resources & Analysis
Mark Gorak is a native of Wisconsin. He has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and mathematics from Marquette University, an M.S. in National Resource Strategy from the Eisenhower School, National Defense University, and an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the Naval Post Graduate School.
He served 33 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a Colonel. He was a helicopter pilot as well as flying fixed-wing aircraft. He commanded an aviation company, and later was an Army manpower analyst. He served with Joint Task Force Iraq. He chaired various military operations research working groups.
He served 18 months as the director of people analytics within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Research Affairs. Prior to his current role, Gorak was Deputy Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.
Gorak is married to Kristin, and they have five children. He is part owner of the Green Bay Packers.
In the News…
The Defense Department’s Principal Director for Resources & Analysis, Mark Gorak, is heading a new Cyber Academic Engagement Office. The office will coordinate and fund academic engagement programs in an effort to recruit and retain cyber talent.
Director Gorak said messaging has been part of the Pentagon’s cyber personnel retention issue. “I talk to students and I tell them, ‘You can join the Department of Defense as a civilian,'” he said. “They look at me like I’m cross-eyed. [They say], ‘I had no idea that we have 900,000 civilians in the DoD.'”
“There are people out there today… working in their bedroom upstairs who are outstanding cyber professionals who can do this job, but because they don’t have the experience and they don’t have the degree and they don’t have whatever certs we think are hot right now, we don’t hire them,” he said. “I think that is a mistake by the federal government, and we have to get past it.”
