Lt. Col. William Denn, originally from Albany, New York, commissioned into the U.S. Army through the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2006 with a Bachelor of Science in International Relations and Systems Engineering. He led both tank and infantry platoons in Iraq fighting alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga in Mosul from 2007 to 2009. In 2010 as an intelligence officer he served as a Combat Advisor to the Afghan Security Forces in Regional Command East, Afghanistan.
Following his deployments, Denn developed new efforts to bridge gaps between national intelligence and the deployed tactical warfighters at the National Security Agency. After commanding a military intelligence company at the NSA, Denn completed his master’s in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School in 2015.
Following Harvard, Denn graduated as the top graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College and completed the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies where he studied to become an operational and strategic war planner.
Denn went on to serve with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, (known at Fort Liberty since 2023) where he served as the Division’s intelligence planner during increased tensions with North Korea and then later as the senior intelligence officer for the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. While with the 82nd Airborne Division, Denn was integral for efforts to improve and standardize training and evaluations for tactical intelligence soldiers across the entire U.S. Army.
After serving with the 82nd Airborne, Denn served as the senior intelligence trainer at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Bavaria, Germany, responsible for training and certifying U.S. and NATO tactical units across Europe. Denn also subsequently worked at the Pentagon on the Joint Staff’s Strategy Plans and Policy Directorate (J5), where he served as the J5 Crisis Management Team representative during the United States' retrograde from Afghanistan; as a branch chief in the J5 Security Cooperation Division; leading the transition team for the incoming Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and serving as the JS J5 Deputy Chief of Staff during the initial stages of the Russia-Ukraine War.
Denn is currently the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G2) in the 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Denn most recently returned from a nine-month deployment to Poland where 3rd ID led efforts as the forward-deployed Division in support of US Army Europe’s efforts to assure allies, reinforce NATO, and deter Russia in the wake of the current Russia-Ukraine War.
Denn has written for the Washington Post, The Boston Herald, and several academic and military journals. He has published on a variety of topics to include interagency integration into military operations, civil-military relations, counterinsurgency and security force assistance, intelligence reform and leadership studies. He is a recipient of the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award and the General George C. Marshall CGSC Distinguished Graduate Award. He was selected as a national finalist for the White House Fellowship. He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.