John Brister

John Brister is a veteran of the defense and intelligence industry, leveraging a leadership style marked by intellectual curiosity, contrarian thinking, and consensus-building to drive innovation and transformation at some of America’s top national security brands. John currently serves as Director, International & Commercial Solutions at General Atomics Intelligence, an affiliate of General Atomics and pioneer in data science. In that capacity, he manages a unique offering of software, hardware, and human expertise to help commercial and international customers achieve decision advantage.

Prior to joining General Atomics, John led teams and initiatives responsible for modernizing large, complex organizations held back by moribund missions, platforms, and procedures. This includes helping the U.S. Department of State build and promote a new digital platform to share its diplomatic and intelligence insights with other U.S. agencies and foreign partners; the University of Virginia create analytics to save the Commonwealth's higher education institutions millions of dollars, and a fashion retailer revamp its supply chain and distribution using location intelligence. In each of these contexts, John delivered solutions otherwise unimagined and success otherwise uncommon. And from it all, he gained an appreciation for the importance of prioritizing humans—domain expertise—amid a tendency to automate away such contributions.

John graduated from the Virginia Military Institute before serving in the U.S. Army on active duty. He continues to serve as a Reservist and resides in Albemarle County, VA with his family, where he enjoys old books, gardening, running, and equestrian sports.