December 10, 2025

President Trump Appoints Thomas Emanuel Dans to Lead U.S. Arctic Research Commission

INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT AND POLICY LEADER REAPPOINTED TO USARC

President Donald J. Trump has appointed Thomas Emanuel Dans of Sugar Land, Texas to lead the United States Arctic Research Commission (USARC), an independent federal agency that advises the President and Congress on America’s research activities in the Arctic.

Mr. Dans commented, “I am honored to serve President Trump and our nation by helping lead the United States’ vital research mission in the Arctic.  The Arctic forms the “roof” of our Western Hemisphere, home to our beloved United States, and the most important region in the world.

America’s Arctic research enterprise undergirds our vital national security interests. It generates essential knowledge, inputs and understanding to inform planning and decision-making across our nation, our larger world, and increasingly, the universe beyond.  These domains range from security and defense, trade and transportation, and resource development and management to food and agriculture, energy, space and, most importantly, the health, safety and well-being of our citizens.

America is an Arctic Nation. We are a nation defined by excellence. United States Arctic research will be no less.  We will restore our country to global leadership in Arctic research and, in doing so, help build, enhance and protect America’s Arctic for centuries to come. In this mission, our Commission looks forward to working with the great people of Alaska, all states of the Arctic, and with the greater community of peaceful nations.”

Mr. Dans’ career includes over three decades of successful experience in finance and venture investing, entrepreneurship and public service. His industry experience covers oil and gas, mining, energy, agribusiness and fisheries, tourism and transportation. He is a frequent speaker on U.S. Arctic and national security affairs across a wide range of media and forums.

This appointment marks Mr. Dans’ return to service for President Trump. During the President’s first term, Mr. Dans served at U.S. Treasury as Counselor for International Affairs. While at Treasury, among other duties, he played a central role following the COVID emergency in helping rescue Alaska’s aviation industry and handled policy engagement with Arctic partners, particularly Greenland. Later, President Trump appointed Mr. Dans to the Commission, where he served during 2021.

Prior to entering public service, Mr. Dans held senior investing roles at Merrill Lynch, Allen & Company Incorporated, and Evercore Partners, in addition to venture capital funds focused on Russia and Eurasia. As an entrepreneur, he has also started and built several successful businesses. Today, his primarily focus is shipbuilding and transportation where, among other projects, he is leading an effort to develop icebreakers and ice-class vessels for the United States while helping restore America’s Maritime Base.

Outside of industry and government, Mr. Dans has also been active in developing and advancing policy. He formerly served as a Visiting Fellow in Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation and subsequently founded American Daybreak to help promote U.S. business and cultural ties across the Arctic and Eurasia.

Mr. Dans holds a dual B.A., with Honors, in Russian Studies and U.S. History from Brown University. In 1990, he studied as an exchange student in the Soviet Union at the Moscow Energy Institute and spent 2015 at Harvard University as an Advanced Leadership Fellow. Mr. Dans is a CFA Charterholder, the highest professional designation in the investment management industry.  Mr. Dans also becomes the first fluent speaker of Russian, the language of the world’s largest Arctic nation, to lead the Commission in its more than 40-year history.  He speaks five languages and has lived, worked and traveled in over 40 countries.

A proud Texan and Hispanic American, Mr. Dans comes from a large family of U.S. Veterans.  His generation is the first raised in English in a home with hot running water.  Both of his parents once worked as research scientists for the U.S. government and his father, a physician, rose from poverty on New York’s Lower East Side to become one of the nation’s leading infectious disease experts at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  Mr. Dans is a husband and father of three, as well as an active volunteer in his community, parish and as a Knight of the Order of Malta.

Mr. Dans also continues a proud tradition of Arctic service to the United States begun by his grandfather and namesake, Manuel Dans, a 50-year U.S. Merchant Mariner. During WWII, Manuel made dozens of treacherous voyages across three war zones including convoying on the “Murmansk Run”, supporting the defense of Greenland and, following the war, helping establish Thule Air Base there (today Pituffik Space Base) as part of Operation Blue Jay.