Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Dr. Steven Gale ’69

Senior Adviser for Human Security

National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Dr. Steven Gale, who now lives in Washington D.C. with his wife Sheila, is far away from his pre-hipster Brooklyn hangouts, yet remains close to his family’s long-held ethos to make a positive and lasting difference in the world. His mother, he recalls, worked tirelessly for the New York City Department of Education. She and his dad were indefatigable boosters for Hobart and William Smith. His father received the HWS Sesquicentennial Parents Association Award in 1972, and his mother was the recipient of the Allan A. Kuusisto Presidential Award in 1982. Those were life-long lessons of hard work and dedication that served Steven Gale well during his career. After graduating from Hobart with a B.A. in psychology, he fell in love with public service and never looked back. Within a month of graduation, he was teaching elementary school while earning an M.A. in psychology from Brooklyn College. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the Graduate School, City University of New York and a post-doctoral research fellowship from Columbia University.

A love of science combined with a passion for public service fueled a remarkable career which has taken him to more than 40 countries across five continents and to senior positions in the White House, on the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice, and in Congress on the professional staff of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, as a Brookings Legislative Fellow. Gale has also held leadership positions in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), as Program Evaluation Chief early in his career, at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and on overseas assignments with the U.S. State Department. Recently he was appointed to the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group. Gale has dedicated his life’s work to solving tough development challenges here and abroad.

As a young scientist in 1979 with grant money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Gale set his target on unraveling the causes of human obesity at NIH’s first-ever clinical obesity research center, now at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. Through a series of studies using animal models of human obesity, Gale showed that obesity was caused by multiple factors including genetics, hormones, and overeating of highly palatable diets. While each could lead to obesity, Gale demonstrated that the overeating syndromes were remarkably distinct. Those lab-based efforts led to a number of scientific publications and awards followed by his induction into Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society of North America.

Gale’s early scientific accomplishments in the field of obesity caught the attention of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service -- the largest “food corporation” in the world guiding the delivery of millions of meals (breakfast and lunch) daily in almost every school district nationwide. The Service also administers the WIC Program which provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods for low-income women and infants. With his scientific and nutrition expertise well established, Gale was recruited by USDA to lead a number of Congressionally-mandated studies. He was frequently called upon to testify before Congress. Before he knew it, Gale had risen to become the Service’s Program Evaluation Chief in 1985, which took him from coast-to-coast planning studies, collecting data, and developing USDA policy guidance.

When the phone call came from USAID to join their cutting-edge evaluation office, Gale was eager to try his hand at assessing the impacts and sustainability of their international assistance programs. Over the next two decades, he travelled extensively for USAID throughout the developing world broadening his portfolio to cover natural resource management, infrastructure, health, and governance. In 2004, he was tapped by the White House to become Director for Afghanistan at the National Security Council (NSC) under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Without question, working at the NSC was the most exciting -- and most exhausting -- two years of my professional life,” he says. A highlight of his NSC service was to arrange for former Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s inaugural meeting with President George W. Bush at the White House and to plan Karzai’s precedent-breaking address to a Joint Session of Congress.

Gale was back at USAID only a few short years before he received a Brooking Legislative Fellowship in 2009 and then was enlisted by the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security. On the job only a few short weeks, Gale organized a series of high profile Congressional Hearings for the Subcommittee Chair which focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan security threats, transnational drugs conspiracies, and flawed Afghan elections. 

“Having spent most of my career in the Executive Branch of government, it was an extraordinary opportunity to work on Capitol Hill,” Gale says. “It had its terrifying moments for sure, when the President’s Drug Czar testified under heavy security in the House Rayburn Hearing Room, but nowhere as scary as House of Cards.”

Back again at USAID, Gale was a founding member of the Office of Science and Technology, which later became the Agency’s Global Development LAB -- chartered to revolutionize the delivery, scale and impact of U.S. foreign aid. As senior adviser for strategic opportunities at the LAB, Gale leads a futures analysis team to identify emerging global trends in such areas as demography, urbanization, governance, and technology.

In 2013, Gale published “The Future Can’t Wait,” 10 essays by the world’s leading development thinkers. His book, now in its second printing, was recently chosen as a “top read” by The Futurist, the leading forecasting and trends periodical published by the World Future Society. Before leaving for his current appointment to the National Intelligence Council, Gale co-led the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Science and Technology for Development in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the recipient of numerous distinguished U.S. government awards including USAID’s Meritorious Honor Award. Gale serves as a long-time counselor for the USAID-State Department Mentorship Program. Far from their ancestral roots, he and Sheila remain loyal Brooklynites and visit often.