Mr. Lazar is NATO’s Industry Relations senior coordinator. Defence Industry, Innovation and Armaments Division (D2IA) is part of the NATO International Staff, at NATO Headquarters located in Brussels, Belgium.

Previously managing the NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) and the Life Cycle Management Group (LCMG), within the Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD), which brings together the procurement officials from NATO nations, he covered the whole spectrum of engagement with industry throughout the entire life of capabilities.  Prior to working on and with industry, he was responsible for the development of Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JISR) and Command and Control (C2) architectures, policies and capabilities within the NATO Air Force Armaments Group (NAFAG). 

Liviu was the lead author of the NATO Interoperability Policy and Strategy that included the new concept of interoperability of all components of a capability, from doctrines to equipment, rather than a distinct element.

He also created the Framework for NATO Industry Engagement, which is the policy construct for NATO’s engagement with defence, security and commercial industry, as well as increasingly non-defence traditional and deep tech. This is the policy covering NATO’s engagement with industry at both pre-competitive and competitive stages, supporting the implementation of the decisions taken at NATO Summits on strengthening the defence industrial base in Europe and North America, and boosting the transatlantic defence technological and industrial cooperation.  The framework was the stepping stone in building the Defence Production Action Plan and NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge. 

He created the NATO-Industry Forum as an event co-organised by the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and the Assistant Secretary General for D2IA, which is the venue for NATO’s strategic dialogue with top-level executives from industry, academia and think tanks, as well as national administrations, parliamentarians, military and EU institutions. The Forum is aimed at identifying innovative solutions, cooperation opportunities and defining strategies for NATO capability development.

He is NATO’s lead for the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum, organised for the first time in Washington in 2024, followed by The Hague in 2025.

Liviu earned a Bachelor’s degree on Electronics for Radar Systems from the Military Technical Academy, and a Master in International Relations from the Bucharest University.  

Prior to joining NATO, he was responsible, inter alia, for foreign technical cooperation as Deputy Head at the Armaments Department in Bucharest. Before that, he spent almost a decade in R&D, as a scientist leading the Advanced Electronics Research Lab within the defence industry.  During that time, he patented one of his inventions for which he still holds the intellectual property rights.

He is married with Mihaela, and together they have an adult daughter, Oana Alexandra, who is an electronics and computer science engineer.