The musings of a Waste Water Olympian and the future of biotech

What do the hallmarks of competing in Wastewater Olympics, playing bass in an orchestra, contributing to a tactical military task force, and becoming an expert in China S&T Policy have in common? Anna has lived them all.

Anna Puglisi is the Director of Biotechnology Programs and Senior Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).  Previously she served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for East Asia, advising senior U.S. and foreign government officials at the highest levels, academia, and the private sector on counterintelligence (CI) issues and in designing mitigation strategies for both the public and private sectors to protect technology. As a member of the Senior Analytic Service, she developed multidisciplinary efforts to understand global technology developments and their impact on U.S. competitiveness and national security. Anna also started a governm6ent-wide working group looking at developments in biological sciences and has worked on several bio-security issues. She has received numerous awards including the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence. Anna holds an MPA, an MS in environmental science, and a BA in Biology with honors, all from Indiana University. She studied at the Princeton in Beijing Chinese language school and was a visiting scholar in Nankai University’s Department of Economics, where she studied China’s S&T policies, infrastructure development, and university reforms. She has also conducted research and worked in technical infrastructure. She is a co-author of the 2013 study “Chinese Industrial Espionage”, a contributing author to “China’s Quest for Technology: Beyond Espionage” and countless other proprietary words.

In this episode,  we talk about going to work in a hard hat and steel-toe shoes, compiling expertise that resonates with you in advance of others seeing the value in it, music as a multidisciplinary communication tool for biotechnology, and the more about her vision for the work she is leading at the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET).

Her advice for our listeners?

Find what really matters to you and make it your guiding star. Take opportunities that will help you grow as a person, grow in your career, and really challenge you in different ways. People make the path and always be kind.