Defense Alliance Foundation

Our Role in Developing North Carolina’s Defense Innovation Ecosystem

Our History and Role in Developing North Carolina’s Defense Innovation Ecosystem

In 2009 Phil Williams became a member of the North Caroline Defense Business Association (NCDBA), an IRS 501c6 non-profit Defense Industry Trade Association.

In 2010, Phil became an NCDBA Board Member and spun up NCDBA's first committee named "Science & Technology (S&T). Phil has continued his role as S&T Chair NCDBA transitioned into the Defense Alliance of North Carolina. Phil has hosted over 156 S&T Forums since 2010, themes and topics at the intersections of Science, Technology, Innovation, Test & Evaluation, and commercialization. 

Being Located in the Raleigh-Durham/Research Triangle Park of North Carolina and near Fort Liberty formerly Fort Bragg the home of 18th Airborne, JSOC, USSOCOM and Forces Command, Camp Lejeune, and Cherry Point, under Phil's leadership the S&T committee took on the missions of a building a trusted/collaborative teaming environment focused on accelerating innovation and gap closing technologies and solutions that support our men and women in harm's way. Phil's passion was to use his business global acumen to give back to the community, and he continues to invest time, as a volunteer fueling Innovation, collaborative teaming creating solutions to defense industry hard problems.

Since 2010, many teams have formed to pursue and win grants, contracts, and Investor funds that combined total
over $ 3 Billion, creating over 300 jobs, and successful divestitures.

Participants include Industry, Innovators, Defense Primes, Academic, RDT&E, Subject matter experts,
Government Guests.

In 2024, Phil spun up a series of Artificial Intelligence in Defense Forums, held at each of the below Universities
NC State University
UNC Charlotte
UNC Wilmington
East Carolina,
NC A&T University
Fayetteville State Univ
Duke University
Wake Forest University