Dr. Donna Wilt
Army Nuclear Strategist, Division Chief, Nuclear & CWMD Operations Division
U.S. Army Nuclear & CWMD Agency
Over a 25 year public service oriented career, Dr. Donna Wilt has focused on collaboratively affecting practical, purposeful, and impactful change within constrained and complex environments.
Dr. Donna Wilt is currently the Army’s Nuclear Strategist and Chief of the Army’s Nuclear and CWMD Operations Division (reporting to the G 3’s Strategy, Plans, and Policy Directorate and the Director of the US Army Nuclear and CWMD Agency. In her strategist role she develops, shapes, coordinates, or messages the strategy defining the Army’s role in the offensive or defensive use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield and represents the Army’s strategic deterrence messaging. Dr. Wilt represents the Army in Nuclear forums to include the Nuclear Posture Review and Nuclear Weapon Council. Her division owns the Army’s operational mission for translating nuclear targeting into battlefield maneuver implications. NCOD’s Nuclear Employment Augmentation Teams (NEATs) serve a unique and specialized role in combatant command planning drawing from the legacy of the Army’s nuclear mission and knowledge of conventional planning and execution. NEATs deploy on order into combatant command centers to provide best military advice during crisis or conflict. Dr. Wilt also has a team of forward deployed nuclear experts positioned in Army and Joint Commands to increase nuclear planning, training, and education capabilities in theater.
Dr. Wilt has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University, post-doctoral assignments at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the University of Marburg in Germany; 12+ years of practical hands-on experience at LANL on all ways to use, test (including pit surveillance), make (fuels and radiopharmaceuticals), characterize, dispose of, and detect nuclear materials, and 12+ years of federal and contractor experience at DOD, DTRA, NNSA, and DHS, in nuclear deterrence, detection, surety, nonproliferation, and forensics, operational and R&D missions. Dr. Wilt’s multi-disciplinary positions with responsibilities across the globe to include Russia, ASEAN countries, and throughout the European theater, have enabled her to achieve scientific, programmatic, operational, acquisition, and strategic outcomes. She has worked White House level policy development down to individual project strategy and has championed organization reform for greater diversity and inclusion. She has left lasting strategies that continue to be implemented at every position she has left and unlocked roadblocks to progress by analyzing situations and offering practical implementable solutions that take people, organizations, and nations from where they are to where they want to go. She is passionate about maximizing the potential in all situations.
Dr Wilt has been married to John Wilt (COL, ret) since 2013 and shares two children, Luke (25) and Hannah (18).
Dr. Donna Wilt is currently the Army’s Nuclear Strategist and Chief of the Army’s Nuclear and CWMD Operations Division (reporting to the G 3’s Strategy, Plans, and Policy Directorate and the Director of the US Army Nuclear and CWMD Agency. In her strategist role she develops, shapes, coordinates, or messages the strategy defining the Army’s role in the offensive or defensive use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield and represents the Army’s strategic deterrence messaging. Dr. Wilt represents the Army in Nuclear forums to include the Nuclear Posture Review and Nuclear Weapon Council. Her division owns the Army’s operational mission for translating nuclear targeting into battlefield maneuver implications. NCOD’s Nuclear Employment Augmentation Teams (NEATs) serve a unique and specialized role in combatant command planning drawing from the legacy of the Army’s nuclear mission and knowledge of conventional planning and execution. NEATs deploy on order into combatant command centers to provide best military advice during crisis or conflict. Dr. Wilt also has a team of forward deployed nuclear experts positioned in Army and Joint Commands to increase nuclear planning, training, and education capabilities in theater.
Dr. Wilt has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University, post-doctoral assignments at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the University of Marburg in Germany; 12+ years of practical hands-on experience at LANL on all ways to use, test (including pit surveillance), make (fuels and radiopharmaceuticals), characterize, dispose of, and detect nuclear materials, and 12+ years of federal and contractor experience at DOD, DTRA, NNSA, and DHS, in nuclear deterrence, detection, surety, nonproliferation, and forensics, operational and R&D missions. Dr. Wilt’s multi-disciplinary positions with responsibilities across the globe to include Russia, ASEAN countries, and throughout the European theater, have enabled her to achieve scientific, programmatic, operational, acquisition, and strategic outcomes. She has worked White House level policy development down to individual project strategy and has championed organization reform for greater diversity and inclusion. She has left lasting strategies that continue to be implemented at every position she has left and unlocked roadblocks to progress by analyzing situations and offering practical implementable solutions that take people, organizations, and nations from where they are to where they want to go. She is passionate about maximizing the potential in all situations.
Dr Wilt has been married to John Wilt (COL, ret) since 2013 and shares two children, Luke (25) and Hannah (18).