Dr. Jason Rathje
Director, Office of Strategic Capital, U.S. Department of Defense
Dr. Jason Rathje was appointed by Secretary Lloyd James Austin III in 2022 to serve as the Director of the newly established Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) in the U.S. Department of Defense. The OSC’s mission is to attract and scale private capital in support of national security. The office is focusedOSC’s current on the development and implementation of new financial tools to supportincrease public-private investment in our Nation’s enabling and frontier technologies.
Previously, Dr. Rathje served as Director and Co-founder of AFVentures, the Department of the Air Force’s Commercial Investment Arm under AFWERX. In that role, he managed $1.8B of combined government funding and private capital for scaling early to mid-stage technology ventures to support Air Force operations.
At Stanford Management Science and Engineering Department, Dr. Rahtje researched the intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, and specialized in technology entrepreneurship strategies. Specifically, he studied the effect of government partnerships, both as an investor and customer, on basic research through commercialization. This research heavily influenced his involvement in AFVentures, as well as sparked new research projects on how to more intelligently expand the dual-use economy.
Dr. Rathje holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Strategy and Policy from Stanford University, as well as a Bachelors of Science and a Masters of Science in Aerospace Engineering from MIT.