Jim Perkins is a leader in national security technology and innovation with a passion for the people and culture that support them. Currently, he is a Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce where he builds enterprise cloud products for national security customers. Jim’s products bring the DoD into the 21st century by digitizing and automating legacy processes and pushing new definitions of IT systems.

Prior to Salesforce, Jim worked on tactical edge computing at Microsoft and air-gapped cloud computing at Amazon Web Services.

Jim began his career with 11 years on active duty in the U.S. Army, including 14 months conducting route clearance in Iraq. His military decorations include the Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, Valorous Unit Award, Ranger tab, Sapper tab, and Airborne wings. He is now a Major in the U.S. Army Reserve’s 75th Innovation Command in Washington, DC.

Outside of Salesforce and the Army Reserve, he is active with multiple non-profit organizations, including the Joint Software Alliance, Military Mentors, and the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. He was a 2017 Next Generation fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Jim is an expert on national security technology, innovation, and talent management. He has been published in War on the Rocks, the Modern War Institute, Defense News, Military.com, and other outlets.

He holds a B.S. with a double major in economics and foreign languages (French and Russian) from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an M.B.A. from Georgetown University. He lives in Bethesda, MD, with his wife and three sons and is an amateur mountaineer.