Bryan Bender is a strategic communications executive and experienced journalist, author and professor with an extensive network in the national security communities, think tanks, trade associations and the private sector. As Vice President for Communications Strategy for Strategic Marketing Innovations, a Washington, DC, government affairs firm, he advises clean energy, space and biotech companies, nonprofits and research universities.

Bryan brings more than two decades of experience covering national security, foreign policy and domestic politics. As Washington Bureau Chief for Jane’s Defense Weekly and an award-winning Pentagon correspondent for the Boston Globe, he reported on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and military operations around the world. Most recently, he was senior national correspondent for POLITICO and defense editor of POLITICO Pro, where he anchored the newsletter Morning Defense.

He has also chronicled the U.S. government efforts to research UFOs and broke the story in 2017 about a secret Pentagon effort set up by Congress to research “unidentified aerial phenomena.” He is an advisor to Americans for Safe Aerospace, the first military pilot-led nonprofit organization dedicated to UAPs.

Bryan has also taught journalism and public relations at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and is author of You Are Not Forgotten, the story of an Iraq War veteran’s search for a missing World War II fighter pilot in the jungles of New Guinea.

A native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Bryan earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in English Writing and Political Science from University of Pittsburgh and studied Middle East politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.