Captain Eric J. Doucette, U.S. Coast Guard, most recently served as the chief of staff for the Coast Guard’s Ninth Coast District, which encompasses the Great Lakes, the Saint Lawrence Seaway, eight states, and a fifteen-hundred-mile international border with Canada. As the chief of staff, he directly supported the district commander and a workforce of over six thousand active duty, reserve, civilian, and auxiliary personnel.

From 2018 to 2021, Captain Doucette was the captain of the port and sector commander in Boston, Massachusetts. In this role, he was responsible for directing all Coast Guard operations in the region. He previously served in the White House as special advisor to both Vice President Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence from 2016 to 2018. As a member of the National Security Staff, he represented the Office of the Vice President at Principals, Deputies, and Interagency Policy Committee meetings with the National Security Council.

In other international leadership roles, Captain Doucette served as the security assistance officer for Southeast Asia at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, a member of the North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum Experts Group, the head of delegation for the international port security program, and represented the United States at the Group of Eight (G8) Port Security Working Group. Furthermore, Captain Doucette has decades of emergency and incident management experience coordinating with federal, state, tribal nations, industry, and international partners to realize government and community solutions to crises. He is a certified emergency manager and a type I incident commander.

Captain Doucette enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1989 and is a veteran of the Gulf War, where he served in al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia. He graduated from the military college of Norwich University with a bachelor of arts in criminal justice. Later, he earned a master of arts in international affairs from American University’s School of International Service. Captain Doucette was also a senior fellow at the ANSER Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute.

His other past assignments include commanding officer of the National Strike Force’s Atlantic Strike Team, the response chief at Sector Long Island Sound, the Pacific Strike Team operations officer, and group and marine safety offices, port security units, and small boat stations.