General Francis L. Donovan currently serves as Commander, United States Southern Command. An infantry, reconnaissance, and special operations officer, General Donovan has led Marines and Sailors in all three Marine Expeditionary Forces to include commanding a Force Reconnaissance Platoon, Battalion Landing Team, Marine Expeditionary Unit, Marine Expeditionary Brigade, and a Marine Division. He also commanded a Naval Task Force in 5th Fleet (CTF 51) and 6th Fleet (CTF 61). He has served in combat, contingency, and expeditionary operations at sea, from the sea, and ashore.

Other command assignments include a Marine Corps Security Forces Detachment in Crete, Greece; a Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team (FAST) platoon; and a Recruiting Station in Eastern Pennsylvania. He also was Officer in Charge of a Special Operations Training Group; Executive Officer for Marine Corps Special Operations Command, Detachment One; and Director of the Expeditionary Warfare School.

Joint tours include service as the J35, United States Special Operations Command; Branch Chief, Joint Staff, J-5 Trans-regional Threats Coordination Center (T2C2); Assisting Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; and most recently as the Vice Commander, United States Special Operations Command.

General Donovan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from Towson University, a Master of Military Studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and a Master of Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College. He completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at Harvard Business School. General Donovan and his wife Kim, a former Navy Officer, have two children who are both active-duty United States Marines.

LTC Eric Sturzinger is a Network Systems Engineer (FA26A) who has served in a wide variety of positions across multiple combatant commands. He initially served as a Platoon Leader in B Co., 52nd Infantry Regiment (Anti-Tank), 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division from 2009-2010 at Schofield Barracks, HI. LTC Sturzinger then deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn from 2010-2011, serving as Executive Officer of HHC, 2nd SBCT, 25th ID. Upon completing the Telecommunication System Engineer Course in 2012, he served as Systems Engineer of 7th Theater Tactical Signal Brigade in Schweinfurt, Germany from 2012-2013 and later as Systems Engineer of 44th Expeditionary Signal Battalion from 2013-2015 in Grafenwoehr, Germany where he regularly supported EUCOM, CENTCOM, and NATO operations, exercises, and training.

From 2017-2020, LTC Sturzinger served as an Instructor and Assistant Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the United States Military Academy. From 2020-2022, he served as a Senior Data Engineer and led the Aided Threat Recognition from Mobile Cooperative Autonomous Sensors (ATR-MCAS) program at the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AI2C) in Pittsburgh, PA. His most recent assignment is as the Director of Research and Engagements at AI2C, where he manages all academic, industry, and other external relationships as well as all fundamental research for the center. His research interests include Future Internet Architectures, Edge Computing, Machine Learning Operations, Reinforcement Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Geopolitics.

LTC Sturzinger is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University (2006), an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Davis (2017), and a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University (2025), with a thesis titled Survival-Critical Machine Learning, focusing on autonomous system survivability through continuous learning at the tactical edge.