Former Assistant Director for CIA’s Transnational and Technology Mission Center
Sheetal Patel retired from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after a distinguished 28 year career. In her last assignment she served as the Assistant Director for CIA’s Transnational and Technology Mission Center. In this role she established and led a new mission center dedicated to leveraging emerging technologies for U.S. strategic advantage. She directed a dispersed team of intelligence professionals, advancing CIA’s partnerships with the private sector and overseeing efforts related to critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, and next-generation telecommunications. Her leadership provided policymakers with actionable insights on global economic trends, supply chain vulnerabilities, and foreign adversary capabilities.
Sheetal also served as Assistant Director for CIA Counterintelligence, where she again led a large globally dispersed team focused on safeguarding U.S. intelligence personnel, operations, and technology from evolving global threats.
She led efforts to modernize counterintelligence practices, integrate advanced analytics, and enhance risk management strategies, ensuring the resilience of national security operations worldwide as well as oversaw the CIA’s insider threat detection program.
Throughout her career, Sheetal has held several high-impact leadership roles, including Deputy Chief of Station in South Asia, Chief of Analysis for Counterintelligence, and Executive Assistant to two CIA Directors. She has extensive experience briefing White House officials, Congressional leaders, foreign partners, and industry executives. She also served as a Navy Intelligence Officer in the Reserves from 1999 to 2007.
Her leadership experiences have provided Sheetal with unique insight into the national security imperative when it comes to emerging technologies and how the private sector needs be thinking about the vulnerabilities and opportunities related to them.
Sheetal is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Presidential Rank Award, several CIA Directors’ Awards, and Exceptional Service Awards, She holds a Master of Arts in Security Policy Studies from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Boston University. She maintains a TS/SCI clearance with a full scope polygraph.