Rick Miller

Rick Miller leads Pharos Mission Critical Solutions, a combined consultancy and technology integration practice and MobileDOCK-USA a ground logistics optimization solution. He also serves part-time as a Deputy Director at the Atlantic Council. As a former cruise line operations executive, he had responsibility for the largest, single global fleet of ships in the industry leading over a dozen functional shore-based teams and thousands of shipboard mariners. Additionally, he personally led the design, development, and operation of the largest and most advanced Fleet Operations Center in the commercial maritime industry. Rick’s cruise line experience followed a successful career in the U.S. Navy including command at sea, with numerous shipboard and staff assignments across a number of specialties. Operationally, he participated in Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Operating Enduring Freedom, counter-piracy and counter-terrorism operations, and dozens of contingency operations in Europe and the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Ashore, he led current operations for U.S. Southern Command. A proven specialist in strategic planning, international relations & diplomacy, and financial management, he served multiple tours in the Pentagon as part of both the Navy and Joint Staffs directing and planning Navy’s programs and budgets as well as guiding development of defense appropriations to support wartime activities. He served on the personal staffs of both the Vice Chief of Naval Operations and Chief of Naval Operations and worked special support on several issues for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also spent a year as the Navy’s Federal Executive Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy. Rick is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, distinguished graduate of both the U.S. Naval War College and U.S. National War College and the Catholic University of America with undergraduate and graduate degrees include engineering, international affairs, and strategic planning disciplines, as well as doctoral work in political economy. He is the author of over 30 articles, professional papers, and the book Funding Extended Conflicts, a history of U.S. war financing. Rick was the winner of the Naval War College’s B. Franklin Reinauer Defense Economics Prize and the U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History Essay Prize. Active in the South Florida community, Rick is on the Board of Directors of the South Dade Economic Development Council and is Executive Director of the South Florida Defense Alliance. Additionally, he serves as Vice Chair of the state-wide Florida Defense Alliance.