Barry Blechman

A thoughtful, strategic and longtime advocate of eliminating nuclear weapons, Blechman now has a White House that shares his inclination. Blechman, who founded one of Washington’s most successful defense consulting firms, DFI International, in 1984, and the Stimson Center in 1989, has served in the Pentagon, State Department and the Office of Management and Budget and has served on a series of top advisory panels, including the Defense Policy Board and the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Transformational Diplomacy. An advocate for creating a new defense strategy that would make tailored investments and cut billions of dollars from military spending, he recently co-wrote “A New U.S. Defense Strategy for a New Era.” The report, released in November, is already mandatory reading for the Pentagon quadrennial defense review and budget planning teams — it’s likely to be mandatory for others before long. Not bad for a guy who started his career as a Fuller Brush Man.