

Sae Schatz, Ph.D.
Sae Schatz, Ph.D., serves as the executive director of the Partnership for Peace Consortium Secretariat of defense academies and security studies institutes, a multinational security cooperation program based at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.
Schatz’s subject-matter expertise rests at the intersection of human cognition, technology, and data. Professionally, she has experience working with government, industry, and academia.
From 2015 to 2022, Schatz served as the director of the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL), a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) program for research, development, and policy stewardship. She also co-chaired the NATO Training Group’s task group for individual training and educational developments and supported several other international security cooperation programs. Under her leadership, the U.S. ADL Initiative sparked the community’s pursuit of the future learning ecosystem, in part through her popular book "Modernizing Learning: Building the Future Learning Ecosystem." Her efforts were also formally recognized as “a pathfinder for enterprise data services,” by then-DoD Chief Data Officer David L. Spirk.
Before joining the civil service, Schatz worked as an applied human systems scientist. From 2011 to 2014, she was the chief scientist at MESH Solutions, a defense contractor, where she led the U.S. Marine Corps’ “Making Good Instructors Great” project and the U.S. Joint Staff ’s award-winning “Blended Learning Training” effort. Prior to that, she held an assistant professorship with the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation and Training and was an instructor in the University's Digital Media Department.
Schatz is a prolific writer and professional speaker. She has delivered keynote addresses at events such as the NATO Conference of Commandants and Innovations in Testing. She has also published many scholarly articles and several books, including "Engines of Engagement: A Curious Book About Generative AI," and led development of military textbooks, including "CODIAC: Combat Observation and Decision-Making in Irregular and Ambiguous Conflicts," and "Cross-Cultural Advising: A Handbook and Toolkit."
Schatz holds a doctorate in modeling and simulation, with an emphasis on human systems.