Naval Intelligence Officer, U.S. Special Operations Command – Central
Lieutenant Commander Lauren Hickey is an intelligence officer serving at SOCCENT as the operations officer for the Lebanon-Israel Ceasefire Mechanism supporting UN Security Council Resolution 1701. She previously led the Undersea Hard Targets portfolio for U.S. Naval Forces Europe (NAVEUR) and represented the U.S. at the establishment of NATO’s Critical Undersea Infrastructure Protection Network. Her operational assignments include serving as an intelligence watch officer at NAVEUR during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, assistant officer-in-charge of forward-deployed aircrews at Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1), and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command J2 embedded analyst in the Armed Forces of the Philippines at U.S. Embassy in Manila. She deployed five times across the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. Lauren is a Truman National Security Project Defense Council Fellow and Pacific Forum Young Leader. She holds a BS in Political Science and Russian from the Naval Academy and an MBA from the University of Arizona.