Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a scholar, author, practitioner, and entrepreneur who is the founder and chief executive officer of Valens Global. The International Herald Tribune has described Dr. Gartenstein-Ross as “a rising star in the counterterrorism community.” Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has held previous positions at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google’s tech incubator Jigsaw, Georgetown University, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has led a number of major projects as a practitioner, focusing on three major lines of effort. The first is crafting, and supporting the creation of, strategic plans, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence and several strategic frameworks created for the Canadian Department of National Defence. The second is analytic projects for a range of clients, including components of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, major tech firms, and private companies in the oil and gas sphere. In this capacity, he has served as a subject-matter consultant during hostage negotiations with militant groups. The third is training and lectures, including leading instruction for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Individual Terrorism Awareness Course (INTAC); delivering lectures related to sub-state violence for American, Bulgarian, Polish, and Qatari forces and officials; and leading training for Nigerian civil-society activists on militant groups’ use of the online space.
As a scholar, Dr. Gartenstein-Ross is the author or volume editor of over twenty-five books and monographs, and he has a book on jihadist groups’ organizational learning processes forthcoming from Columbia University Press. 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, and received a 10,000 Small Businesses Certificate of Entrepreneurship in 2018.