Vikram Singh

Senior Managing Director

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia

Vikram J. Singh has driven innovation in business, public policy, and global affairs for 25 years through leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of State, major non-profits, and in the private sector.

Vikram joined WestExec as a Senior Advisor in 2017. At the time, he was the Founder and Managing Partner of Red Cedar Global Strategies, LLC, which advised early-stage technology companies doing business with the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. He was also Senior Advisor for Asia at the United States Institute of Peace from 2017 to 2025. Vikram advises the US – India Strategic Partnership Forum on aerospace, defense, and technology and is also Senior Advisor to the Quad Investor’s Network.

As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, he ran negotiations for critical access agreements across Asia, including with Australia, the Philippines, and Singapore, and developed new defense arrangements with New Zealand and Vietnam. His team created the first major program to build defense technology cooperation between the United States and India, an effort spearheaded by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

Vikram was Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Department of State from 2009 to 2011. Prior to that, he was the Pentagon’s first Director for Partnership Strategy, developing and securing passage by Congress of new legal authorities for global defense cooperation. Vikram also ran National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress and was the first Defense Fellow at the Center for a New American Security when it launched in 2007. He started at the Pentagon as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2003, serving in Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics; Strategy; Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict; and at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

Vikram chose to serve the national security mission after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which followed the years he spent covering the civil war in Sri Lanka for Voice of America and running a Ford Foundation program there on conflict management.  He has been awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service and twice awarded Department of State Superior Honor Award.  He is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and Columbia University.