Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown University’s security studies program, and a lecturer at the Catholic University of America. He is also the CEO of Valens Global, a consulting firm focusing on the challenges posed by violent non-state actors.
Gartenstein-Ross’s research and professional work concentrates on (but has not been limited to) al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other jihadist organizations with transnational ambitions. Meanwhile, his client work has included live hostage negotiations in the Middle East, border security work in Europe, performing risk assessments for the oil and gas industry, designing crisis simulations for major academic institutions, and story and series development for major media companies. He also regularly lectures for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) program, and has designed and led training for the U.S. State Department’s Office of Anti-Terrorism Assistance.
Gartenstein-Ross has taught classes or been on faculty at a number of major academic institutions, including the University of Maryland, the University of Southern California, and the Takshashila Institution (India). He has also presented his research at events sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Uppsala University (Sweden), the Combating Terrorism Working Group (Belgium), O.P. Jindal Global University (India), the National Defense College (Abu Dhabi), the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel), and the Defense Intelligence Agency, among others. He has been featured in the Distinguished Speaker Series at the University of Southern California’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), and has been a keynote speaker at the Global Futures Forum.
He is the author or volume editor of twenty books and monographs, including Bin Laden’s Legacy (Wiley, 2011), and has published widely in the popular and academic press, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and Terrorism & Political Violence. He also frequently conducts field research in relevant regions, including North Africa, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in world politics from the Catholic University of America and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.
