Ms. Halimah Najieb-Locke currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience at the U.S. Department of Defense. In this role, Ms. Najieb-Locke is responsible for assessing the health of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) and recommending key policies, investments and actions designed to strengthen the capacity and resilience of the DIB. She is also responsible for advising on actions to safeguard the DIB from potential adverse actions domestically, as well as foreign interventions. Ms. Najieb-Locke oversees the Office of Research and Analytics, the Office of Global Investment Review, and the Office of Industrial Base Support.

Ms. Najieb-Locke was most recently in the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense as the Senior Advisor of Industrial Base and Innovation for the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense where she advised on complex and high priority special assignments and strategies in areas such as federal procurement acceleration, joint experimentation, and critical technology areas. Prior to joining the Department of Defense, she served as the Senior Procurement Counsel for the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis in the U.S. House of Representatives where she conducted investigations and issued findings as they related to the health specific response to the coronavirus crisis, with a focus on procurement activities from companies that are government contractors and federal agencies.

Previously, Ms. Najieb-Locke was Counsel for the House Armed Services Committee where she handled all acquisition related policy issues and legislative development, including Title XIII, acquisition workforce, industrial base policy, foreign military sales (FMS)/export controls and technology transfer. Ahead of this, she served as senior professional staff for the House Small Business Committee handling contracting, entrepreneurial development, veteran’s issues and the SBIR/STTR programs.

Ms. Najieb-Locke is a graduate of the University of San Francisco and the George Washington University Law School, where she specialized in public procurement law and how procurement systems operate, both in the United States and abroad.