Dan L.
Ward
Special Advisor, Talent Solutions, Talent Strategy, and Engagement
,
NASA

Dan L. Ward currently serves as the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) Special Advisor, Talent Solutions. Before NASA, he was the Chief Workforce Economist for The MITRE Corporation. In his commercial career, Ward developed and implemented the human capital planning and analytics practices for EDS, Texaco, GTE and AT&T-Western Electric. He has done scenario planning work in private and public sector agencies.

Dan was the guest editor for HR People + Strategy Fall 2019 issue which was dedicated to contemporary workforce planning practices. He was the senior editor for AMACOM’s acclaimed book, Positioned: Strategic Workforce Planning that Gets the Right Person in the Right Job. He was also the senior editor for HRPS’s Best Practices in Human Resource Forecasting and Modeling.

In 2016, SHRM’s HR People + Strategy recognized Ward’s long-term contributions to innovative people practices with their Lifetime Achievement Award. During what he sometimes describes as his “mis-spent youth,” Dan toured Europe and the US with the US Navy Rock Band – Fly in the Soup.