Sally Sleeper Named New RAND Arroyo Center Director

Sally Sleeper will become the new vice president, Army Research Division and director, RAND Arroyo Center at the RAND Corporation, RAND President and CEO Michael Rich announced today.

Sleeper is a senior management scientist and currently serves as director of the Arroyo Center's Strategy, Doctrine and Resources Program.

“Sally's success in multiple leadership roles across RAND, her experience working closely with leadership at the U.S. Department of Defense, and her broad knowledge of public policy issues make her the ideal choice for this position,” Rich said. “I know she will bring a fresh perspective to the challenges facing the U.S. Army.”

Founded in 1982, the Arroyo Center is the United States Army's sole federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) for studies and analysis. It enables the Army to maintain a strategic relationship with an independent, nonprofit source of high-quality, objective analysis that can sustain deep expertise in domains of direct relevance to perennial Army concerns.

“The U.S. Army is at a pivotal and transformational stage, reorganizing to best position itself to face the challenges of the future,” Sleeper said. “The Arroyo Center has a broad research agenda designed to provide the Army with objective, fact-based research to help it determine the best ways to make investments to meet the challenges it faces, and I am looking forward to helping them as they build upon their strength, agility and resilience.”

Sleeper has been with RAND for nearly two decades. Her research expertise is in organizational effectiveness, innovation and technology development, and program evaluation. In 2008, she was selected as director of programs for the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute, with offices in New Orleans, LA, and Jackson, MS.

From 2012 to 2016, through an Interagency Personnel Act assignment, she supported the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy as a senior advisor, where she developed strategy to assess and mitigate the impact of diminishing budgets on industry and their sub-tier supplier networks, which are integral to the Department of Defense supply base. Before returning to RAND, she also worked to help improve the department's global outreach and access to innovation and led analysis efforts with foreign defense departments.

Sleeper succeeds Timothy Bonds, who led the Arroyo Center for nearly a decade. Bonds has returned to conducting research at RAND as a senior fellow.

Sleeper received a bachelor's degree in environmental design and planning from the University of Colorado at Boulder, an M.S. in policy analysis and public management from Stony Brook University and a Ph.D. in organization science and economics from Carnegie Mellon University.