David Norquist
Mr. David L. Norquist is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA). He has over 35 years of public- and private-sector experience in national security and federal financial management.
Mr. Norquist previously served as the 34th Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2019 to 2021 and was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Department of Defense, including managing the Pentagon’s budget and personnel. He led reforms in DoD business processes and realigned investments toward the challenges of multi-domain warfare.
From 2017 until 2019, as the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/
Chief Financial Officer, he supported the National Defense Strategy (NDS) through the development and execution of the Department’s annual budget of more than $680 billion. Mr. Norquist strengthened accountability to the taxpayer by implementing DoD’s first department-wide financial statement audit.
Norquist began his career in 1989 as a Presidential Management Fellow supporting Army intelligence as a program/budget analyst with assignments on the Army staff, a major command, a defense agency, and at an overseas field site.
Following his time with the Army, Mr. Norquist served for six years with the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense as a professional staff member, where he focused on Air Force aircraft, munitions, ballistic missile defense, and information assurance.
From 2002 to 2006, he served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense in the Office of the Comptroller. In 2006, he became the first Senate-confirmed Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Homeland Security.
Between his stints in government service, Norquist was a partner with Kearney and Company, a certified public accounting (CPA) firm focused exclusively on the federal government.
Mr. Norquist was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He is a 1989 graduate of the University of Michigan, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in political science and a master’s degree in public policy. He also holds a master’s degree in national security studies from Georgetown University.