Nathaniel Fick

Nathaniel Charles Fick (born June 23, 1977) is an investor and technology executive, a former American diplomat, an author, and a former United States Marine Corps officer. He is the Chief Strategy Officer for Equities at Cerberus Capital Management. He was the CEO of cybersecurity software company Endgame, Inc., then worked for Elastic NV after it acquired Endgame. He was an Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. In 2022, he was selected to lead the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. He left the position in 2025.

Fick is the author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, a memoir of his military experience published in 2005 that was a New York Times bestseller, one of The Washington Post's "Best Books of the Year", and one of the Military Times' "Best Military Books of the Decade". Fick was portrayed by actor Stark Sands in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.

Fick was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1977, to Nathaniel Crow Fick Jr, a lawyer that ran a private practice and Jane Ella Fick (Née Stimola) a social worker. He was the first of three siblings having two sisters Maureen Poydras, a lawyer who went into private practice with their father, and Stephanie Noelle. Fick attended Loyola Blakefield high school in Towson, Maryland. Fick went on to attend Dartmouth College. He later graduated with degrees in classics and government in 1999. While at Dartmouth, Fick captained the cycling team to a U.S. National Championship and wrote a senior thesis on Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and its implications for American foreign policy. After leaving the Marine Corps, Fick earned both an MPA and MBA from Harvard University.

In 1998, after his junior year at Dartmouth, Fick attended the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates School and was commissioned a second lieutenant upon graduating from college on June 12, 1999.

Fick was trained as an infantry officer and was eventually assigned as a platoon commander to 1st Battalion 1st Marines. He was an officer in the Amphibious Ready Group of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Darwin, Northern Territory, training with the Australian Army for humanitarian operations deployment to East Timor until the September 11 attacks. He then led his platoon into Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom to support the war on terror. Upon his return to the United States in March 2002, he was recommended for Marine reconnaissance training. He also completed Army Airborne School. He subsequently led Second Platoon of Bravo Company of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.^{[citation needed]}

Fick left the U.S. Marine Corps as a captain in December 2003, and used the GI Bill to attend Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. He came to public notice for his writing on military life and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. His memoir One Bullet Away was a New York Times bestseller, one of The Washington Post's "Best Books of the Year," and won the Colby Award in 2006.

Fick became the chief operating officer (COO) at the Center for a New American Security in 2008 and later was appointed CEO in June 2009.

He was elected to Dartmouth College's board of trustees in April 2012 and served for eight years.