Mike Galloucis, Director of Strategic Communication
Mike Galloucis was born and raised in the metropolitan Boston area. After completing the Army ROTC program in college, he was commissioned a second lieutenant, served 30 years on active duty as an Army officer during the Cold War and the Global War on Terrorism and attained the rank of colonel. He was on duty and working inside The Pentagon on September 11, 2001, when the building was attacked by foreign terrorists flying a hijacked commercial airliner. He served a total of more than 8 years overseas in Germany, the Republic of Korea and Iraq and was selected to lead Army units at increasing levels of responsibility, including as Commander of a Brigade Task Force consisting of nearly 5,000 American soldiers, sailors and airmen in Iraq for 15 months before and during the historic surge of American units in 2007 during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
Galloucis has over 30 years of experience and previously served in key strategic communication positions in the military and later in life as a Federal civilian employee, including Chief, Print Media Branch, Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs; Media Advisor and Spokesman for the 33rd Army Chief of Staff; Senior Speechwriter for the 35th Army Chief of Staff; and concurrently as the initial Deputy Director and Chief of Staff of the Defense Media Activity (DMA). He also was a visiting instructor on Military-Media Relations at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Department of Defense (DoD) Information School at Fort Meade, Md., and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. While on active duty, Galloucis was one of a handful of U.S. military officers who worked directly with members of the Fourth Estate in 1991 following Operation Desert Storm to develop the conceptual framework and institutionalize within DoD the program now commonly referred to as “embedded media,” which allows reporters to embed with deployed U.S. military units overseas to keep the American people informed of ongoing operations.
Following his military career, Galloucis served as the Senior Program Director and Strategic Communications Advisor for the “60th Anniversary of the Korean War Commemoration Committee” and then for 11 years he was a member of the federal government’s Senior Executive Service (SES) at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., Georgia and Florida. His VA assignments included Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Strategic Communication and Engagements, acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs and later as the Executive Director of that office which is based in Washington D.C. and has field offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles and New York City.
When he retired from federal service in 2022, Galloucis had nearly 41 years of total service to our nation and the U.S. Government. He has a Master of Science degree in National Security Strategy, completed a graduate-level fellowship in Public Affairs and Diplomacy at Syracuse University, participated in an advanced seminar in Media Studies at Harvard University, and graduated from the Department of Defense Public Affairs Officer Course and the Joint Officer Public Affairs Course.