Glass, Jonathan

Jon is the Executive Director of the Defense Industrial Base Institute (DIBI), which he co-launched in 2025 at Northeastern University with the mission of catalyzing public-private partnerships and engaging the whole of society to ensure a robust, resilient and dynamic defense industrial base for our nation and our allies. 

Immediately prior to DIBI, Jon served as the Acting Deputy Director for Commercialization at the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E), where he led a team of 20 technology-to-market professionals to oversee the commercial scaling of ARPA-E's $3 billion portfolio of transformative energy technology projects out of laboratories and into markets. 

Prior to his government service at ARPA-E, Jon held executive positions at National Grid Partners, the strategic VC arm of National Grid plc, one of the world's largest investor-owned utilities, and GE's IP licensing and strategic VC and private equity investment arms. In between National Grid and GE, he co-founded two tech startups.  

Overall, Jon brings more than twenty years of executive leadership experience in business development, venture capital and private equity investing, leveraged finance, strategic partnerships, technology commercialization, new business creation and IP licensing. He has global transaction experience, having executed and managed investments, acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic partnerships on six continents. Jon is a co-inventor on two issued US patents and maintains a deep professional network across a broad range of industries and technologies.