Guy Walsh, Brigadier General, USAF
Executive Director, National Security Collaboration Center
Guy M. Walsh is the founding executive director of the National Security Collaboration Center (NSCC), located at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The NSCC was established in 2019 to bring government, industry and academia together to collaborate and find solutions on issues relevant to the countries national security and defense. The NSCC, a core initiative in UTSA’s downtown campus expansion, will advance research, education and workforce development in cybersecurity, data science, control systems and cloud computing while anchoring the creation of an emerging high tech corridor supporting San Antonio and South-Central Texas’s future.
Walsh brings a wealth of experience in building strategic alliances between federal and state government, academia and industry partners. He is among the nation’s foremost leaders in national security as the strategic initiatives lead for U.S. Cyber Command. His expertise includes cybersecurity operations, international affairs and partnerships, risk mitigation and crisis response, strategic planning and execution, and local and state emergency management. In 2015, Walsh was a founding member and deputy director of the Capabilities Development Group, charged with integrating USCYBERCOM’s prioritized cyberspace capability development to rapidly deliver joint operational products and services required for generating, facilitating and monitoring effects in and through cyber space. He was also a founding member, co-developer and champion for CYBER GUARD, a Tier 1 level exercise to develop a “whole of nation” (federal, state and private sectors) response to cyber threats to U.S. critical infrastructure and key resources.
In addition to his national security expertise, Walsh has significant military operational experience. A career A-10 Close Air Support pilot, Walsh graduated from the USAF Academy, serving as a flight, squadron and group commander prior to his appointment as the commander of the Air Force’s 175th Wing, part of the Maryland National Guard. While overseeing the Maryland group’s war fighting and emergency readiness from 2002 to 2009, Walsh led the Maryland Air National Guard response to support Hurricane Katrina operations in Louisiana and Mississippi.
General Walsh has over 20 years of executive level management and operational leadership roles in both national defense and domestic operations (DSCA/DOMOPS) including aerospace operations, cyberspace operations, counterinsurgency and disaster relief and recovery. He has been an innovative and motivational leader of complex organizations including Commander, 175th Wing, Maryland Air National Guard and Commander, 451st Air Expeditionary Wing, Kandahar, Afghanistan and most recently as Founding Executive Director of the National Security Collaboration Center. Guy is command pilot with 100 combat missions and 4,200 flying hours in military aircraft including the A-10C Thunderbolt, F-4 Phantom and C-130J Hercules.
General Walsh is a native of Manasquan, New Jersey and a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and Harvard’s Senior Executive program in Homeland Security. He served as a National Defense Fellow with the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS) and also holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California.
