Richard R. Majauskas
Mr. Majauskas, a member of the Senior Executive Service, serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement. He is responsible for investigative and compliance activities directed primarily at enforcing national security and foreign policy objectives focused on sensitive exports to hostile entities, terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism, and prohibited foreign boycotts. He oversees a highly specialized cadre of export enforcement Special Agents, analysts, and support personnel located at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, nine domestic field offices, and at locations abroad in the United Arab Emirates, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and Russia.
Prior to assuming duties as the Deputy Assistant Secretary, Mr. Majauskas served in a variety of senior executive positions within the Legislative Branch. They included, Assistant Sergeant at Arms for the United States Senate with responsibility for continuity and emergency preparedness operations, Director of the Office of Emergency Management and Director of the Office of Plans, Operations and Homeland Security for the United States Capitol Police and Chief of Staff for the Chief of the United States Capitol Police.
Mr. Majauskas retired from the United States Army as a Military Police Colonel after nearly 30 years of experience in leading highly successful law enforcement and security operations both domestically and internationally. He commanded at all levels from company to brigade and served in numerous law enforcement positions as a military police operations officer, deputy provost marshal, provost marshal and as the deputy chief of staff for the Army Criminal Investigations Command. His military career culminated as the Senior Department of Defense Liaison Officer to the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Department of Justice.
Mr. Majauskas is a native of Watertown, Connecticut. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Public Administration from Golden Gate University.
Matthew S. Borman
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Administration
Matthew S. Borman currently serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration. In this position‚ Mr. Borman is responsible for implementing the Bureau of Industry and Security's (BIS) controls on the export of dual-use and military items for national security‚ nonproliferation, and foreign policy reasons. He is also responsible for BIS’s programs to ensure that industrial resources are available to meet national and economic security requirements‚ including section 232 import investigations and defense industrial base surveys, BIS's implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Additional Protocol to the US-IAEA Agreement. In addition‚ he oversees BIS's Deputy Assistant Secretaries for Strategic Trade and Technology Security. Mr. Borman previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary from 2001-2024, during which time he oversaw sweeping national security controls to counter China’s military-civil fusion strategy, played a key role in developing and implementing US and allied strategic trade restrictions on Russia, led updates to the Export Control Reform initiative, and developed secure trade policies with Cuba, among other achievements. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary‚ Mr. Borman served as Acting Chief of the Enforcement and Litigation Division of the Office of Chief Counsel for Export Administration. As division chief‚ he was responsible for providing legal advice to the Export Enforcement unit of BIS‚ including the adjudication of administrative enforcement actions.
Mr. Borman entered the Commerce Department in 1992 as an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel for Export Administration. As an attorney in that office‚ Mr. Borman was responsible for a variety of matters‚ including attempts to revise the Export Administration Act‚ Congressional‚ General Accounting Office and Office of Inspector General investigations and studies‚ Freedom of Information Act requests‚ and export control cooperation with foreign governments. Before entering government service, Mr. Borman represented clients in a variety of trade, regulatory and pro bono matters in private practice.
Mr. Borman received his B.A. in History from Northwestern University‚ his M.A. from Northeastern University‚ and his J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Matthew S. Axelrod
Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement
Matthew S. Axelrod currently serves as the Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, a position to which he was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate in December 2021.
In this capacity, Matt leads a cadre of special agents and analysts dedicated to a singular mission – keeping our country’s most sensitive technologies out of the world’s most dangerous hands. Matt and his team help protect U.S. national security by enforcing the country’s export control laws. They work to prevent exports of sensitive goods and technologies that can be put to malign purposes like weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferation, military and military-intelligence applications, terrorism, and human rights abuses. They also work to ensure that U.S. persons do not participate in unsanctioned foreign boycotts. Matt also co-leads the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, an interagency law enforcement strike force that targets illicit actors, protects supply chains, and prevents critical technology from being acquired by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.
A longtime public servant with deep criminal and national security enforcement experience, Matt previously spent over thirteen years at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Florida and then in a series of high-level jobs at DOJ headquarters. From 2015 to 2017, Matt served as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, one of DOJ’s highest-ranking officials. In that role, he advised the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General on DOJ’s most significant issues, including the most consequential criminal and national security enforcement matters. Matt directly supervised a staff of twenty-five lawyers and helped to oversee DOJ’s workforce of 113,000 employees, including all of its prosecutors and law enforcement agents. In 2021, he rejoined DOJ on Inauguration Day as part of the senior leadership team, serving as Senior Counselor in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.
Matt has also previously served as Special Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel, where he worked on both domestic and national security matters, and as a partner in an international law firm, where he did internal investigations and white-collar defense work on behalf of companies and individuals. Matt was also one of the founding corps members at City Year, a forerunner and inspiration for the eventual AmeriCorps national service program.
Matt received his B.A. cum laude from Amherst College and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was Notes Editor for the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, Matt clerked for the Honorable Ralph K. Winter, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for the Honorable Janet C. Hall on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.
Douglas R. Hassebrock
Director Douglas R. Hassebrock is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement. In that role, he is the senior career law enforcement official within the Bureau of Industry and Security. He is responsible for National Security and the promotion of foreign policy objectives. His law enforcement program is focused on three core areas: Stopping the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and missile delivery systems, diversion of Commerce goods to terrorists or state sponsors of terror, and preventing commodities from being used for unauthorized military end-use.
Prior to his current position, he served as the Assistant Director, Investigations, Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board where he led the oversight of over $787 Billion in economic stimulus spending. He also served as the Special Agent in Charge of the Eastern Region, U.S. Department of the Interior - Office of Inspector General, and Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Technology Crimes Section, U.S. Department of Energy - Office of Inspector General.
Director Hassebrock started his career in law enforcement with the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) where he worked in many different areas including special access programs, counterintelligence, white-collar crime, crimes against persons, and environmental crime. He remains a Special Agent with OSI in a reserve military officer capacity in the rank of Colonel. In that role, he is the senior reserve officer for the entire Agency serving as the Individual Mobilization Augmentee to the Commander, AFOSI.
Director Hassebrock has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Campbell University, NC, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Corporate Finance from Old Dominion University, VA. He is also a graduate of the USAF Air War College and the USAF Air Command and Staff College.
Thea D. Rozman Kendler
Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration
Thea D. Rozman Kendler was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration at the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), following unanimous confirmation by the United States Senate. In this role, Ms. Kendler leads Export Administration’s highly trained technical professionals in controlling the export of dual-use and military items for national security and foreign policy reasons, analyzing the impact of export controls, and supporting the U.S. defense industrial base. Among other responsibilities, Ms. Kendler chairs the Advisory Committee on Export Policy (ACEP), which resolves interagency policy disputes related to export license applications submitted to BIS. To advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, Ms. Kendler regularly engages with Congress, industry, academia, and other stakeholders on the nature and scope of BIS’s activities and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).
Ms. Kendler joined BIS as an experienced export controls, sanctions, and national security attorney. Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, she was a prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, handling complex investigations and prosecutions affecting U.S. national security and strategic trade controls. From 2004-2014, Ms. Kendler served in BIS’s counsel’s office, where she provided legal advice to BIS’s Export Administration and Export Enforcement branches, including during the initial years of Export Control Reform. Before joining the federal government, Ms. Kendler practiced in the international trade group of a global law firm.
Ms. Kendler received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. While in law school, she received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to further her Chinese language study. Ms. Kendler earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, with a concentration in the School of Public and International Affairs and certificates in East Asian Studies and Chinese Culture. She has studied Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, and lived in Japan as a teenager. Ms. Kendler’s public service is inspired by gratitude to the United States for enabling her family’s immigration as post-World War II refugees. Originally from New Jersey, Ms. Kendler now lives in Maryland.