Chris Fussell

Chris Fussell is a former Navy SEAL Officer and Vice Chairman of McChrystal Group, an advisory services firm that improves the performance of organizations by building highly adaptable teams capable of solving the world’s most complex leadership challenges. Chris is the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams, a follow-up to the New York Times best-seller, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement in a Complex World, which he co-authored alongside General McChrystal. One Mission aims to equip organizations with a game plan for building an agile and powerful team of teams that are completely aligned and moving toward the same goal. 

Chris spent 15 years as an officer on US Navy SEAL Teams, leading SEAL elements in combat zones around the globe. From war-torn Kosovo to counter-terrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to highly specialized efforts in the troubled areas of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, he experienced and led through the modern evolution of the US military’s Special Operations community, first on SEAL Teams Two and Eight, then in the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Fussell served as Aide-de-Camp to then-Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal during General McChrystal’s final year commanding JSOC, where they served for a year together in Iraq. As McChrystal’s right-hand man, Fussell was an integral part of a team that made possible the Special Operations community’s transformation into a successful, agile network.  

Outside of McChrystal Group, Fussell serves as a Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, a Senior Fellow at New America, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the board of trustees with the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation.