Debra van Opstal

Debra van Opstal is charged with developing new programmatic concepts, and assuring cutting-edge quality and synergies among the Council on Competitiveness’ research programs. She also has served as secretary to the board of directors of the Council since 2003.

Van Opstal joined the Council as vice president in April 1996 to manage its ongoing work in innovation policy and national competitiveness. She launched the Council’s first innovation project chaired by William Hambrecht, founder of Hambrecht and Quist; William Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University; and William Steere, chairman and CEO of Pfizer.

Van Opstal has co-authored several Council publications, including Five for the Future in 2007 with Bill Bates, Council vice president of government affairs; the 2001 Competitiveness Index with Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter; and the companion volumes Going Global: The New Shape of American innovation and The New Challenge to American Prosperity: Findings from the Innovation Index. She was a principal author of Innovate America, the 2004 report of the National Innovation Initiative.

She leads the Enterprise Resilience Initiative, launched in 2003, managing the steering committee, co-chaired by Chad Holliday, CEO of Dupont, and Jerry Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon, that oversaw this work. Van Opstal authored the initiative’s 2007 publication Transform. The Resilient Economy: Integrating Competitiveness and Security.

She has been the strategic funding lead for many of the new projects launched at the Council. She wrote proposals which resulted in more than $1 million in funding for regional innovation from the U.S. Department of Commerce, more than $1.5 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Labor and more than $1 million for the departments of Energy and Defense.

Prior to joining the Council, she was the fellow in science and technology and deputy director of the S&T program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Van Opstal authored numerous articles and books, including Global Innovation/National Challenges; Integrating Civilian and Military Technologies: An Agenda for Change; Roadmap for FAR Reform; National Benefits from National Labs; Leaders and Crisis; View from the Decisionmakers; Combating Terrorism: A Matter of Leverage; and Meeting the Mavericks.

She has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Defense Science Board, the former Congressional Office of Technology and the Library of Congress. Van Opstal currently chairs the judging panel for the Gerald R. Ford journalism award.

Van Opstal holds a Bachelor of Arts from Pitzer College and an Master of Arts from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.