Christopher Burnham

Burnham graduated from Kent School in 1975. He studied national security policy at Georgetown's National Security Studies Program, and is a graduate of Washington and Lee University and Harvard Kennedy School[4] where he earned a master's degree in public administration.

Burnham is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps Reserve and retired at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He volunteered for active duty in 1990 and served as an infantry platoon commander in the Gulf War.

From 2006 to December 2012, Burnham was the vice chairman and managing director of Deutsche Asset Management, and a member of the Global Operating Committee. In 2008, Burnham co-founded and led Deutsche Bank's direct private equity group, RREEF Capital Partners, the bank's reentry into private equity after an eight-year absence. He also chaired Deutsche Bank's governance committee in Germany.

Burnham joined the Department of State in September 2001, and has been confirmed twice by the United States Senate. Burnham joined the United Nations[5] after serving as acting Under Secretary of State for Management for Secretary Condoleezza Rice, and as Assistant Secretary of State for resource management and chief financial officer of the State Department for General Colin Powell. He established the first UN Ethics Office, the first United Nations Independent Audit Advisory Committee, the adoption of new International Public Sector Accounting Standards, the first comprehensive consolidated annual report in the history of the United Nations, and a new whistleblower protection policy that received independent recognition as the “gold standard.”[6]

Burnham served as a senior foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney presidential campaign and was a member of the Romney Transition Team, and as a member of the President-Elect Trump Transition Team for Rex Tillerson. He serves on the board of directors of Blue Water Defense, located in Puerto Rico, and only after sanctions were lifted, he was appointed to the board of directors of En+ Group, PLC, a publicly listed Russian holding firm formally owned by Oleg Deripaska, who in return for the removal of sanctions, agreed to sell his stake to less than 35%.

In May 2019, Burnham was named to the U.S. Department of Defense Business Board. He is co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Cambridge Global Capital, a venture capital investment firm focused on opportunities in life sciences, cyber and data security, and data analytics.