Biography - Duane M Smith

Dr. Duane ‘Mike’ Smith is a retired Coast Guard Captain with over 35 years experience in maritime operations working in such areas as port and maritime security, coastal security, infrastructure protection, waterways management, vessel traffic management, port management, port operations, and oil and hazardous materials response operations. He is a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) with a B.S. in Marine Transportation. Dr. Smith holds a M.S. in National Security Strategy from the National War College, a M.A.S. from Johns Hopkins in Management and a Doctor of Management in Organizational Leadership from the University of Phoenix. His doctoral dissertation focused on emergency response operations and is titled A Study of Command and Control of Multi-Agency Disaster Response Operations.

After graduating from the USMMA, Dr. Smith spent six years working as a licensed officer of merchant ships, before joining the Coast Guard in 1980. As a Merchant Marine Officer he worked on a salvage tug, on an Army Corps of Engineers dredge, an oil tanker and spent nearly four years in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he worked in the North Sea for the offshore oil industry.

Within the Coast Guard, Dr. Smith’s operational specialty was the area of Marine Safety, Security and Environmental Protection. His major duties in this field included the inspection of merchant ships, investigation of maritime casualties, coordination of response activities to oil and hazardous materials spills, and security of ports and nation’s waterways, including anti-terrorism activities. His last assignment in the Coast Guard was as Chief, Maritime Security Strategic Planning and Requirements Staff. Prior to that assignment he was assigned as Chief of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Homeland Security Integration Team, which was created to integrate the Coast Guard’s port security operational efforts after September 11, 2001.

Dr. Smith’s other assignments within the Coast Guard include serving as Commanding Officer, Officer in Charge of Marine Inspection, and Captain of the Port-Marine Safety Office Mobile and assignment as the Deputy Associate Director of Maritime Security Policy with the Secretary of Transportation’s Office of Intelligence and Security. It was in this latter assignment that Dr. Smith co-authored the publication Port Security: A National Planning Guide and compiled the publication International Perspective on Maritime Security. After leaving the Coast Guard, he worked for SRI International serving as the Deputy Director of SRI’s Center for Maritime and Port Security. Currently Dr. Smith is the managing member of the consulting firm Sextant Strategic Consulting.