Kyle Ballard '04

Kyle M. Ballard is a native Californian currently living in Washington, DC. He is Director of International Government Relations at Raytheon Technologies. In this role, he focuses on Raytheon's government Relations abroad as well as on emerging technologies and export finance in defense, space, and commercial aerospace. Prior to this role, he was Senior Coordinator for Reports and Political Affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP), responsible for the production of the annual Trafficking in Persons Report and coordinating the U.S. Government’s bilateral diplomacy to combat human trafficking worldwide. Prior to J/TIP, Kyle was the Strategic Planner at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is responsible for the execution of U.S. security cooperation programs ranging from defense institution building to the annual transfer of more than $40 billion in defense equipment and services. Kyle led a team in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor focused on sectarian tensions and religious freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, and for developing rights-based approaches to combating violent extremism. Before that, he countered conventional weapons proliferation in the Bureau of Political Military Affairs, where he engaged in end-use monitoring of U.S. defense exports and partnered with various government agencies and international organizations to identify front companies and criminal networks. Kyle was a graduate research assistant at the Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (MonTREP) and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and has held positions in NGOs, the private sector, and at the United Nations focused on transitional crime, international security, and human rights. He is a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles, the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and the computational social science program at George Mason University. He is the proud father of three young daughters.