Chris Finan

Chris Finan is an entrepreneur with a passion for creating world-changing companies, products, and policies. Chris is a nonresident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior fellow with Technology for Global Security. Chris has advised and served in executive leadership positions in a variety of early-stage and growth-stage cybersecurity companies, including Shape Security, acquired by F5 Networks, and Impermium, acquired by Google. He also co-founded Manifold Technology, a Silicon Valley-based fintech startup that delivered blockchain-based cryptographic transaction infrastructure to the Global 500.

Prior to his time in Silicon Valley, he was the product director for Plan X, a Department of Defense cyber warfare research and development program at Defense Agency Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Chris also served in the Obama administration as the director for cybersecurity legislation and policy on the National Security Council staff in the White House. During his time on the NSC, Chris led the administration’s legislative reform efforts, played a key role in the data privacy debate, and spearheaded the executive order that directed the NIST cybersecurity risk framework. Chris began his career in the U.S. Air Force as a pilot and intelligence officer, including a tour in Iraq where he led an intelligence unit and served as a liaison to the Iraqi government.

He has been a regular contributor on Bloomberg News and MSNBC, and his writing has been featured in the New York Times, Politico, Time, and Wired. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two daughters.