Introducing Mark Peters, MITRE President and CEO

I knew about MITRE. An amazing mission serving the nation and, and the great people.

I'm really excited about getting to know everybody because after I accepted the role, I can't tell you how many people came up to me and said, wow, what a great organization, what an awesome organization. So I just, I just can't wait to be here. 

I have a bachelor's degree in Geology from Auburn University. War Eagle. And I have a PhD from the University of Chicago in Chief Physical Sciences. That's where I met my wife, Ann Marie of, of 35 years. And we have three great kids.
Family's really, really central to everything. It defines me. That's where I find my, my comfort, my love, and all my support. 

What brought me here after I left postdoc at Caltech, I pretty quickly got into the FFRDC world in the Department of Energy, and that culminated me running Idaho National Laboratory from 2015 to 2020, where I was the president and CEO of, of a laboratory of somewhat comparable scale to, to MITRE and went to Battelle and had been working there for three and a half years running their FFRDC portfolio. 

The President and CEO of MITRE has a, has a lot of roles. One of the key roles is Chief Listening Officer, understanding what the organization's thinking about, what's on their mind, what directions they think we need to take, frankly, what's working and what's not working, and doing everything we can to, to address it. Never perfect, but do our best. I'm gonna have to spend a lot of time learning from everybody here about, about the details of the mission. I have ideas, but, but I, I want to hear, hear from the organization as and, and chart a path together.

I operate with a lot of care and empathy and I'm gonna try to get around and really talk to people and, and really think deeply about how to communicate in different ways.

I'm all about inclusion and everybody feeling included. I mean that in the sense of gender, race, sexual orientation, everything. But I also mean in terms of what jobs that we all have.

It's always been about mission and people with me. So it just makes sense. This, this just is really, really makes sense and, and that's why I'm so excited.