Laura Galante

Laura Galante is the former Cyber Executive for the U.S. Intelligence Community. For nearly two decades, she has built the teams and capabilities that have exposed the globe’s most sophisticated hackers and cyber operations. Her work unravels the hidden networks of people and technology behind some of the most costly and damaging breaches to date.

Laura brings her threat intelligence expertise and executive leadership to companies and boards across tech and critical infrastructure verticals, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and governments in Europe and Asia. She is currently a Principal at WestExec Advisors, a strategic geopolitical advisory.

From 2022 to 2025, she served at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As the DNI’s principal cyber advisor and Director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, she was responsible for the coordinated Intelligence Community response to major cyber incidents. These included major Chinese compromises of U.S. critical infrastructure, crypto heists, and debilitating ransomware attacks on hospitals and the healthcare sector.

From 2017 to 2021, she assisted multiple Ukrainian government agencies in developing their cyber intelligence and defense operations, directed an international task force monitoring digital and misinformation threats, and served as an expert witness in groundbreaking cyber warfare trials. She speaks frequently on global competition in the digital domain at international and industry conferences, including her widely viewed and cited talk, which opened TED2017.

Laura previously served as the Director of Global Intelligence at Mandiant (formerly FireEye Inc.), the cybersecurity firm, where her teams gained widespread recognition for their pioneering discovery and attribution of multiple nation-state and criminal cyber operations.

She holds a B.A. in Foreign Affairs and Italian from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from the Catholic University of America. She runs a small farm in rural Virginia with her family.