Ryan Hillsberg

Ryan Hillsberg is the Director of Corporate Security at Seagen, a global biotech company, and is an accomplished security leader with more than 20 years of international experience in intelligence and security.

Hillsberg spent 13 years at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an Operations Officer (OO) recruiting spies and stealing secrets around the world. He speaks French, Danish, and Portuguese. As a covert operative, Hillsberg was tasked with running foreign intelligence operations and collecting strategic intelligence on issues such as counterterrorism, counterproliferation, nuclear security, political instability, covert action, and other various state secrets. Hillsberg received several CIA Exceptional Performance Awards and was CIA’s top regional intelligence producer during two separate CIA tours overseas.

After leaving the CIA, Hillsberg worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science laboratory focused on national security. As a senior security advisor, Hillsberg’s primary responsibility was business development between the Laboratory and the Intelligence Community. During that time, he also ran an emerging objective on Insider Threat, managed the DOE polygraph program, and helped PNNL’s Seattle strategy in linking the private sector with government agencies in the Intelligence Community.

After PNNL, Hillsberg joined Amazon where he led worldwide security for Amazon Prime Air—the drone delivery program—and was responsible for the security of worldwide facilities, personnel, and intellectual property. In addition, he was the Global Security Operations representative for Amazon’s enterprise-wide Insider Threat program.y

Hillsberg is the co-author of "License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids" (Putnam, June 2021) together with his wife and former CIA intelligence officer, Christina Hillsberg. "License to Parent" has been called "a fresh and fascinating perspective on child-rearing" by Kirkus Reviews, and Publisher's Weekly called it a "winning spin on the usual parenting fare."