Distinct Backgrounds. One Shared Philosophy.

Natalya Dean is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CTD International GmbH. Her work centers on creating strategic opportunities at the intersection of defense, emerging technology, industry and investment. Natalya and Richard co-founded CTD to apply their combined experience to building international partnerships, advancing credible capabilities and connecting innovation with operational demand.

Her career spans nearly three decades across military service, government and industry. Beginning in the U.S. Army in 1998, she subsequently held leadership responsibilities across the security assistance enterprise, including combatant command engagement and embassy leadership, before taking on senior international roles within one of the world’s largest defense primes. Throughout her career, she has directed and helped shape defense portfolios and pipelines valued in the tens of billions of dollars, including some of the world’s largest Foreign Military Sales portfolios.

Since 2014, she has lived and worked between Europe and the Middle East. This sustained international experience has given her a practical understanding of how governments, military organizations, industry and investors make decisions, and where their priorities diverge. It enables her to develop multinational opportunities that align operational requirements, commercial objectives and sovereign ambitions. Her work also includes continued support for Ukraine’s protection and rebuilding.

Through CTD, Natalya and Richard have built strategies and international foundations where none previously existed. CTD established an international opportunity pipeline of approximately $2 billion for a U.S. defense startup, alongside the partnerships, stakeholder relationships and market presence needed to pursue it. CTD was also engaged by a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe to guide a senior strategic advisory firm’s European expansion and develop its regional strategy from the ground up. CTD’s work with investment funds and defense technology groups encompasses identifying and qualifying companies and capabilities, assessing their strategic and commercial relevance, and preparing businesses for investment and due diligence. This provides perspective on both sides of the investment process, connecting investor priorities with the readiness and growth potential of emerging companies.

Across engagements with U.S., European and Middle Eastern defense and dual-use companies, Natalya brings together capability assessment, commercial validation, international positioning and industrial partnership development. She understands that promising technology alone is not enough. Adoption requires a credible route to market, the right institutional relationships, and an approach that accounts for exportability, integration and local industrial priorities.

Natalya is driven by the ability to recognize potential before the path to realizing it is established. Her strength is identifying what is missing and connecting the people, capital, institutions and industrial partners required to move an opportunity forward. Natalya and Richard created CTD to turn those connections into tangible outcomes, building opportunities that would otherwise remain unrealized and helping strategically important technologies become enduring capabilities.

Richard Woolgar-James is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of CTD International GmbH, where he works at the intersection of defense strategy, technology, acquisition, policy, and international market development. His career has been defined by understanding how technically strong ideas become strategically relevant capabilities - and why, in complex defense environments, many do not.

With more than two decades of experience across government, NATO, international security, and the defense industry, Richard brings an uncommon ability to view a problem simultaneously through operational, institutional, political, and commercial lenses. At CTD, he helps companies and partners understand not simply whether a capability is technically compelling, but where it fits within the wider strategic environment, how it will be perceived by decision-makers and end-users, what barriers may prevent progress, and what must change to create a credible path toward adoption.

Before co-founding CTD, Richard served in senior defense-industry and government roles focused on NATO, European defense, and strategic policy. He was Corporate NATO Lead for Northrop Grumman, where he worked across the Alliance environment to connect company capabilities with evolving NATO requirements, priorities, and acquisition considerations. Earlier, as the United Kingdom’s Defence and Security Policy Attaché at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, he operated directly within the Alliance policy and decision-making environment.

Richard also worked within the NATO nuclear policy community, advising on deterrence, strategic nuclear forces, dual-capable aircraft, exercises, and strategic messaging. His broader international-security work has included research and analysis with Chatham House and the United Nations on non-conventional threats, counter-terrorism, missile proliferation, arms control, and emerging security challenges.

That combination of policy, industry, research, and practical market experience shapes Richard’s role at CTD today. He is particularly focused on the point where technology, strategy, and institutional reality meet: translating complex capabilities into propositions that governments, acquisition organizations, operational users, and strategic partners can understand and act upon.

Richard’s approach is analytical but highly practical. He challenges assumptions, looks for the context behind the stated requirement, and works to identify the adjustments - sometimes strategic, sometimes technical, sometimes relational - that can materially change the outcome.

At CTD, that perspective complements the firm’s broader ability to connect technology, operational need, government priorities, industry, capital, and acquisition pathways. The objective is not simply to position a capability more effectively, but to help create the conditions in which the right capability can move from relevance to decision, acquisition, and ultimately operational use.