John Adams

John Adams serves as chief financial officer (CFO) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he leads the organization’s financial strategy, operations, and long-term planning. He oversees finance, accounting, audit, enterprise risk, and federal compliance, ensuring strong stewardship and alignment of resources in support of CSIS’s policy mission. Before joining CSIS, John served as CFO of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center, where he directed all aspects of financial strategy and provided fiscal stewardship for approximately $1.5 billion in annual revenue. He strengthened internal controls, modernized financial operations, and built scalable finance capabilities to support the laboratory’s rapid growth, while enhancing data-driven decision support for senior leadership. Earlier in his career, John held several Senior Executive Service roles within the U.S. Department of the Navy, helping oversee one of the federal government’s largest and most complex financial enterprises, managing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and global operations. He also served in senior leadership positions within the Department of Veterans Affairs as director for corporate travel and charge card services and as the U.S. Marine Corps director for financial policy and procedures, where he guided financial operations for globally deployed forces and advanced disciplined resource management frameworks. John holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a certified defense financial manager and holds professional certifications in project management and ITIL Foundation.