The Space Enterprise Council (SEC)

David Beering

Principal / Owner, Intelligent Designs

Lee Rizzo

Vice President, Government Affairs, SAIC

Lee Rizzo, vice president of government affairs for SAIC’s National Security and Civilian Markets groups, represents all of SAIC’s space-related work, encompassing contracts with civil, defense, and intelligence community space organizations. Lee also serves Combatant Commands and the Departments of Commerce, Transportation and Justice. He  conducts government affairs, advocacy, and outreach  for a portfolio of more than $3 billion annually

Lee has over 23 years of experience in the space and intelligence communities and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force in a variety of collection, analysis, leadership, and war fighting positions in the U.S. and abroad. His service includes wartime deployments to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Fox and Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. He completed his active duty assignments at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Wash, D.C.

He is an EXCOM member of the Air Force Association and serves on the CompTIA Space Enterprise Council. He sits on committees for the Professional Services Council and Northern VA Technology Council, and is on the board of the Space Transportation Association.

Lee joined SAIC in 2017 after spending the past 10 years as part of Harris Corp (formerly ITT/Exelis). At Harris, he served as the Customer Engagement and Advocacy Director where he led all top-level engagements across an $8 billion business portfolio.

Lee holds a Bachelor of Science in political science and mathematics from the State University of New York at Brockport and a Master of Science in strategic intelligence with a focus on space and airborne collection systems from the Joint Military Intelligence College.

Lee also served as the Director, Strategic Accounts and Advocacy at Harris Space and Intelligence Systems. In this capacity, he led a team conducting strategic account management, government affairs, customer/legislative advocacy, and business intelligence to advance and protect the position of Harris Space & Intelligence Systems — ensuring close coordination with industry and the government.

He served as the Director, Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Advocacy for Exelis, where he managed all senior military, intelligence community, and legislative-based government relations on behalf of Geospatial Systems defense and classified space, airborne and ground programs. Before moving into advocacy, he was the Director of Strategic Airborne ISR Development. In this capacity, he was responsible for strategic planning and business development, concentrating on driving business into the national security community and expanding Exelis offerings in airborne ISR, image processing, management and dissemination technologies.

Prior to joining Exelis in 2007, Mr. Rizzo was the vice president of sales, business development and government relations for SANZ Incorporated’s Geospatial Services group. Preceding that, he served as program manager and business developer for the National Capital Area operation of Ball Aerospace’s systems engineering solution division.