Where there’s fire on the front lines, there must also be light in the classroom—and Michael Wallace has dedicated his career to providing both. As founder and co-chair of Pracademic Affairs, hosted by HSToday, Wallace helps bridge practice and academia, ensuring that real-world lessons from the field inform the scholarship and strategies shaping homeland security’s future.
A retired military intelligence officer, Wallace served 20 years in assignments spanning Naval Special Warfare, Defense Human Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. He later brought his expertise to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advising on counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, and special warfare at the highest levels of national security.
Today, Wallace channels his operational experience into academia as Director of the Emergency and Security Studies program and senior professor of practice at Tulane University, while also serving as an adjunct professor at the Naval War College. In these roles, he develops and mentors the next generation of homeland security leaders, grounding them in the realities of crisis, conflict, and resilience.
By linking the field to the classroom through Pracademics, Wallace is blazing a trail that ensures homeland security innovation is forged not just in theory or action alone, but in the powerful union of both.