swears in Brian Bulatao as the new Under Secretary of State for Management with
Ulrich Brechbuhl looking on. Bulatao served in the US Army from 1986 to 1993, graduating from
Ranger School in that time. After his military service he worked as a consultant with
McKinsey & Company. In 1997 he was one of the founders of Thayer Aerospace together with a number of other West Point graduates. Among them were his former West Point classmates
Mike Pompeo and
Ulrich Brechbuhl. While two of the other founders left the company a short time later, Bulatao and Pompeo remained with Thayer until 2006. Bulatao later joined Chick Packaging Inc. as its CEO, and after the company's acquisition by Nefab A/B in 2010 he became Executive Vice President, leading the combined operations in North and South America. Later he went into private equity, finally as a senior adviser at Highlander Partners, L.P., a Dallas-based investment firm that claims more than $1 billion in assets under management. In 2017 when Pompeo became
Director of the CIA, he brought Bulatao in as a senior advisor, then named him as Chief Operation Officer, a position that earlier was named Executive Director. In this position his priorities are the streamlining of the hiring process, taking a systematic look at the alignment of strategy, staffing, funding, and other resources; making CIA's contracting process more effective and efficient; ensuring that the Agency as a whole is positioned to invest in and lead in cutting-edge technologies; and finding innovative ways to protect CIA officers' identities and operations in the digital age. In July 2018 Bulatao was nominated for the position of
Under Secretary of State for Management as the successor to
Patrick F. Kennedy. In May 2019 Senator
Bob Menendez lifted the almost year-long hold he had placed on the confirmation as soon as Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo promised to send to the Senate documentation relating to allegations that "Trump administration political appointees at the State Department had sought to remove or reassign career employees who were seen as hostile to Trump’s agenda." During the nomination hearings, Bulatao said that if he were confirmed, he would not tolerate "political litmus tests" in the department. In March 2021, Bulatao joined
Activision Blizzard as Chief Administrative Officer and oversees the
Call of Duty Endowment in addition to administrative actions including Corporate Social Responsibility activities across
Activision Blizzard. == Personal life ==