BusinessAdmiral Thad Allen joins Booz Allen as senior vice president

Published 1 December 2011

On Monday defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton named Admiral Thad Allen (USCG-Ret) as a senior vice president. The distinguished Four-Star Admiral and former Commandant of the Coast Guard is best known for his roles in managing the federal responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

On Monday defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton namedAdmiral Thad Allen (USCG-Ret) as a senior vice president. The distinguished Four-Star Admiral and former Commandant of the Coast Guard is best known for his roles in managing the federal responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The thirty-nine year Coast Guard veteran will join the firm’s Justice and Homeland Security business, where he will lead development of thought leadership and client engagement regarding the direction of law enforcement and homeland security. He will also contribute to other initiatives in energy, defense, and international markets.

“Allen brings to Booz Allen unique experience as the head of a major homeland security agency (USCG), as well as an unequalled record at achieving operational effectiveness at the interagency level,” the company said in a statement.

Following Hurricane Katrina, Allen, then the Coast Guard’s Chief of Staff, was chosen as the deputy to Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown and tasked with coordinating the Bush administration’s search and rescue efforts. Four days later he was given full command of the U.S. government’s response after Brown was relieved of duty due to the perception that he had mishandled the crisis.

Allen was widely credited with successfully turning around the relief effort. During a 2010 interview, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said Allen “performed magnificently in a crisis, nobody could have done it better.”

Allen was appointed to a four year term as Commandant of the Coast Guard on 25 May, 2006.

Ten days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April, 2010, Admiral Allen was named the National Incident Commander by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to coordinate the federal government’s response to the spill. On the one-year anniversary of the spill, TIME magazine described Allen as the “hero of the gulf.”

“Thad’s forty years of experience in critical operational missions, including leadership of the nation’s largest ‘whole of government’ responses during Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, will allow him to provide a unique perspective on how government agencies must evolve during the next decade,” said Ralph W. Shrader, the chairman and CEO of Booz Allen. “His years of service to our country will be an invaluable asset to our clients as we help them achieve their important missions in a vastly different budget environment.”

Since his retirement from government, Allen has been a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation focusing on disaster recovery operations, emergency preparedness, and community resilience.

“As I consider the next phase of my career, I’m pleased to have the opportunity at Booz Allen to take a broader perspective on issues so critical to our nation, promoting a discussion among government and industry about how to make our homeland security and law enforcement efforts even more effective as security and budget challenges become even tougher,” Allen said.