Juliane Gallina, a two-time Wash100 Award winner, has joined the Arlington, Va.-based Lavrock Ventures as a partner after 12 years at the CIA in two tours.
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Who Is Juliane Gallina?
Gallina is a veteran intelligence and national security professional. In addition to most recently serving as deputy director for digital innovation at the CIA, she also served as associate deputy director for digital innovation and a dual-hatted role as chief information officer and director of information technology enterprise.
Prior to joining the CIA, Gallina was vice president of federal key accounts at IBM. She began her federal career as a cryptologic officer in the U.S. Navy. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Gallina was the first woman to lead its brigade of midshipmen since it was founded in 1846.
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Why Did Juliane Gallina Join Lavrock Ventures?
Gallina said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Tuesday that she views joining Lavrock as continuing her national service career in helping create a burgeoning startup community focused on defense technologies. Gallina spent 10 years at the National Reconnaissance Office and spent 21 years in the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserves, in addition to her CIA service.
Gallina also said she was attracted to Lavrock because she could prioritize working on certain technologies. She met Lavrock Co-Founder and General Partner Jim Hunt through a friend nearly 10 years ago and kept in touch over the years. Lavrock is investing out of its third fund, which initially raised about $100 million in 2025. This fund has a $125 million goal and will close early in 2026.
What’s Attractive About Defense Technology Startups?
Defense technology startups in 2025 attracted roughly $40 billion in investment through September, according to Pitchbook’s Emerging Tech Research, Defense Tech VC Trends report dated Q3 2025. Gallina said defense and national security technologies are garnering a lot of investment because of concerns that emerged during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic about supply chain dependencies on other nations.
“I think that was a wakeup call for people in the national security space that there were opportunities for improvement in America’s ability in manufacturing its own solutions,” she said.
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Secrecy makes venture capital investments in defense or intelligence technologies challenging, Gallina said. This is because there are behaviors or techniques that can’t be communicated to just any contractor, making it difficult for the intelligence community to explain what it needs.
The CIA, under Gallina’s leadership, has increasingly used digital transformation capabilities such as human-machine teaming and AI to solve the U.S.’ most challenging national security issues. The agency, since creating the Directorate of Digital Innovation in 2015, has encouraged combining digital technology into its foundational human intelligence mission, which obtains intelligence from humans.
Gallina said every DDI objective is guided by human-machine teaming, which begins with data and is bolstered with AI before being leveraged by CIA agents. The CIA, she said, is not only a HUMINT-focused agency, but also serves as the functional manager for open source intelligence for the IC.
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