Kenneth A. Myers III has served as director for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction since July 27, 2009. The DTRA was created in 1998 with the responsibility of working with foreign governments to dismantle nuclear weapons or at least to reduce their level of threat to the United States and its allies.
Myers holds a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a master’s degree from the Catholic University of America.
In 1994, Myers joined the communications firm of Robinson lake Sawyer in Washington, DC, specializing in U.S. public and private sector investments to the successor states of the former Soviet Union and was responsible for establishing the firm’s office in Kyiv,
Ukraine.
From 1995 to 2002, Myers served as a legislative assistant for national security and foreign affairs for Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), joining his father, who worked on Lugar’s staff from 1983 until his retirement in 2007. Myers III assisted the senator in his role as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate’s National Security Working Group and Russia Working Group.
Myers served from 2003 to 2009 as a senior staffer on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He also served as the senior advisor to Lugar on European, former Soviet Union and Central Asian affairs, and the Caucasus, as well as for arms control, arms sales and weapons of mass destruction matters.