Two very different institutions, one consistent approach: that is the through-line of Justin Fulcher’s career, which has spanned telemedicine entrepreneurship and defense policy advising across more than a decade.

Fulcher was only 21 when he co-founded RingMD in 2013, a telemedicine venture aimed at connecting patients across Asia with physicians they could not otherwise reach. Healthcare infrastructure across parts of the continent had failed to keep up with rapid mobile phone adoption, and Fulcher’s teams built products for that exact gap, prioritizing function over polish in low-bandwidth conditions found across the region.

Forbes Asia took notice in 2017, adding Fulcher to its 30 Under 30 list in the Healthcare & Science category. He has since moved on from day-to-day operations, remaining involved only as a board member and minority shareholder within the company as it continued operating across Asia.

Shifting to National Defense

In early 2025, Justin Fulcher stepped into a new role as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense at the Department of Defense. His focus there settled on acquisition reform, where his team helped bring software procurement timelines down from years to months and pushed forward broader IT modernization across the department’s many divisions.

He also joined senior defense officials on international dialogues held across the Indo-Pacific region, adding a foreign policy dimension to his institutional work. Fulcher told Charleston Digital Corridor in 2020, well before his government role began, that “without the basic, fundamental healthcare access, it handicaps many parts of the world,” a comment that still frames how he approaches large, uneven systems today.

He holds a Middlebury Institute master’s degree in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies and is now completing a doctorate in International Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS, credentials that mirror his current focus on rare-earth supply chains and defense technology innovation across the department’s broader modernization agenda. Refer to this page to learn more.

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