By Julie Galante
For Adam Caruso MC/MPA 2027, hard problems are rarely isolated to one place. They span battlefields, laboratories, government offices, universities, and the private sector—and often move faster than any one institution can respond.
Caruso learned to work across those boundaries during his more than 20-year career in the U.S. Army. As a Special Forces Officer, he led teams during combat deployments and served in senior assignments focused on counterproliferation, emerging technology, policy, and research partnerships. In his final military role, he helped connect U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) with universities, investors, laboratories, and technology companies developing tools for national security.
Now retired from the Army and enrolled in the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration (MC/MPA) Program, Caruso is taking a breath. As part of the inaugural American Service Fellowship (ASF) cohort, he’s studying how leaders can organize people and institutions to address problems that no single agency or sector can solve alone.
“I needed to get to higher ground so I could see where the trade winds were blowing, identify where things were going, and help shape some of that change,” he says.
A nonlinear military career
Caruso grew up in Rockland County, New York, and attended Northeastern University as an undergrad, where he served in the National Guard.
“I always wanted to be a Green Beret,” he says. “Whether it was from reading about them, watching The Green Berets with John Wayne, or getting a better sense of what that unique culture and capability represented within the Army—I was hooked as a kid.”
He began his Army career after graduation, just as the United States entered a new era of conflict. The September 11, 2001 attacks happened as Caruso was completing his Infantry Officer Basic Course and getting ready for Ranger School. During his early deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 and 2004, he worked with members of the Army Special Forces units involved in the first operations in Afghanistan.
“Working with those operators and seeing the professionalism of that community made me realize that’s where I belonged,” he says.
He later completed Special Forces Assessment and Selection and served as a Detachment Commander in the 5th Special Forces Group. Alongside tactical leadership roles in Special Forces, Caruso pursued assignments involving technical, policy, and institutional work.
At the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, he worked on a Radiological-Nuclear search operations program, and the technologies used to support them. The assignment led him to explore questions involving counterproliferation and radiological and nuclear detection, and chemical and biological threats.
Later at USSOCOM headquarters, he managed programs involving Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction exercises, testing, and evaluation, and then served as a USSOCOM liaison to the U.S. State Department, advising on special operations policy and coordinating activities with interagency partners.
Each assignment gave him a different view of how government identifies problems, develops capabilities, and brings them together to create enduring solutions.
Connecting research to military needs
For his final military assignment, Caruso returned to New England in 2021 as USSOCOM’s first technology liaison for the region, working with universities, laboratories, hospitals, investors, startups, and technology companies—among them MIT and its Lincoln Laboratory, government-funded research centers, and other organizations developing tools and conducting research to support the special operations community.
“That role grew beyond science and technology discovery,” he says. “It became more focused on enterprise-level partnership development and management.”
Caruso worked to connect researchers and technology developers with people who understood the operational requirements of the Special Operations community. He was especially focused on shortening the distance between research and use.
“I wanted to create more ‘flywheels’ to help those capabilities reach the field faster,” he says.
And the work also gave him a new perspective on the region.
“The concentric circles of energy and influence—from Kendall Square and Cambridge to Harvard Square, the Greater Boston area, and New England—were incredibly exciting,” he says. “I’m happy to still be part of that ecosystem.”
Finding the missing piece
Caruso’s work with technology and research led him to help co-create the MIT course, Engineering Innovation: Global Security Systems, which brings together students from its School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management with practitioners and sponsors from the national security community. Students in the course work with end-users and subject matter experts to develop and assess possible solutions to real-world technical problems. HKS students are known to cross-register into this course, bringing policy perspectives into the classroom.
Caruso enjoyed the work but gradually recognized a gap in his own preparation.
“Harvard and the Kennedy School offer what I was missing—and what I see as a gap across many sectors—and that is leadership,” he says.
After years of moving among military operations, government agencies, universities, research organizations, startups, and investors, he knew how to form relationships and organize efforts around complex technical questions. But at HKS, he could study the leadership choices that shape those efforts.
“The connection between government leadership and the hardest problems we need to solve in policy, politics, and good governance really became clear when I came here,” he says.
Caruso says being a student in Professor Tim O’Brien’s course, Exercising Leadership: The Politics of Change, has been especially valuable.
“Having that class as a laboratory for testing what I know about leadership and developing stronger leadership skills is exactly what I wanted to do when I came here,” he says.
“The connection between government leadership and the hardest problems we need to solve in policy, politics, and good governance really became clear when I came here.”
A fellowship for the next chapter
The American Service Fellowship (ASF) made it possible for Caruso to leave a senior military position and enroll full time. But the decision required more than professional planning; it meant stepping away from a familiar career path.
“The fellowship reduces the risk and anxiety of going to school full time,” he says.
Caruso and his ASF cohort—public servants with backgrounds in education, law enforcement, emergency management, and the military—are helping define the inaugural program for future fellows.
“My cohort has reinvigorated me,” he says. “We come from different backgrounds and we may not share the same work or leadership experience, but we recognize one another as peers.”
He sees the cohort as a learning community and also as stewards of the program’s future.
“As the first cohort, we have a responsibility to set a standard for what it means to be an American Service Fellow and make the program worthy of the investment that generous donors have made,” he says.
Moving toward the work that matters
Caruso isn’t setting his sights on a single position or organization just yet. He’s using this year to study how national security, technology, and public policy are changing.
“Things change so quickly, which is why I wanted to come to school instead of walking directly into one of the other environments I was considering,” he says.
He is watching the development of the defense and national security technology sector, particularly in Boston and New England. Some organizations have disappeared, others have matured, and new needs and opportunities will likely emerge before he graduates in May.
“You have to anticipate where the ecosystem will be by graduation,” he says. “I’m paying attention to where the winds are blowing while also thinking about where things may be headed next.”
“We’re entering a new nuclear age, and we need to determine what policies and guardrails are appropriate—or whether guardrails are even the right approach. That’s what you come to the Kennedy School for: Harvard-hard problems.”
Whatever his next position, Caruso expects his work to involve building programs and partnerships around difficult policy and security questions. He is especially interested in questions about artificial intelligence (AI), nuclear deterrence, and the rules that should govern powerful technologies.
Those questions felt especially immediate after a recent episode of The Daily featuring national security correspondent and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy David Sanger, who explored what safeguarding nuclear weapons can teach us about safeguarding AI.
“It’s wild to me how close the connections are between HKS and informing the national and global insights and understanding of this complicated issue,” he says. “What excites me is being around people who think about AI policy through the same lens as nuclear disarmament policy. We’re entering a new nuclear age, and we need to determine what policies and guardrails are appropriate—or whether guardrails are even the right approach. That’s what you come to the Kennedy School for: Harvard-hard problems.”
For public servants considering their own next chapter, Caruso offers an example of what the American Service Fellowship makes possible—not an escape from public service, but a chance to reassess, strengthen, and redirect it.
As Caruso’s own journey demonstrates, the next chapter of public service may not follow a linear path. It may lead from combat operations to technology ecosystems, from national security to leadership education, or from one difficult problem to another.
The important thing is to keep moving toward the work that matters.
“Government work is exciting,” Caruso says, “especially when you’re solving hard problems.”
Photographs by Steph Stevens
