about dgr

Dr. 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’s previous positions include senior advisor to the director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Community Partnerships, fellow with Google’s think tank Jigsaw, adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, and senior fellow at 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:

1. Crafting and supporting the creation of strategic plans, including those adopted at a national level. In 2019, Dr. Gartenstein-Ross led Valens Global’s efforts to support the drafting, threat assessment, and crafting of priority actions for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence, which was publicly released in September 2019 and has subsequently guided DHS’s approach to confronting terrorism and other forms of sub-state violence. That document has received widespread acclaim, with the New York Times editorializing that the document “focuses unapologetically on right-wing terrorism, particularly white supremacist extremism,” which constitutes “a shift that is both urgently needed and long overdue.” In 2020-21, he led the creation of a strategic framework for Canada’s Department of National Defence related to its newly implemented hateful conduct policy.
    
2. Analytic projects. Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has led several analytic projects that fuse cutting-edge academic methodologies, deep domain expertise, and granular command of hard-to-find details. Clients for whom he has led this work include components of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, major technology firms, and companies in the oil and gas sphere. He also served as a subject-matter consultant on the Iraq-based militant group Asaib Ahl al-Haq during live hostage negotiations with it.
    
3. Training, lectures, and war games. Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has served as an instructor for a variety of topical courses, including serving as the lead instructor for a multi-year period for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Individual Terrorism Awareness Course (INTAC); delivering lectures related to terrorism, sub-state violence, and online extremism for American, Bulgarian, Polish, and Qatari officials and security forces; lecturing for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute; and leading training for Nigerian civil-society activists on militant groups’ use of the online space. He also leads Valens Global’s acclaimed war-gaming practice, which helps participants creatively and rigorously approach relevant topics. In this capacity, Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has designed and led simulations for various clients, including the Canadian Department of National Defence, the Global Counterterrorism Forum, Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Georgetown University, and Johns Hopkins University.

As a scholar, Dr. Gartenstein-Ross is the author or volume editor of over 25 books and monographs. He has a book on jihadist groups’ organizational learning processes (Enemies, Near and Far) forthcoming in 2021 from Columbia University Press. Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has also published widely in the academic and popular press.

Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has served as an expert witness in numerous federal court cases, both civil and criminal. He has testified on his areas of core competency before the U.S. House and Senate over a dozen times, as well as before the Canadian House of Commons and European Parliament. Dr. Gartenstein-Ross is a frequently featured speaker at events and conferences across the globe, including giving multiple keynote addresses.

Dr. Gartenstein-Ross holds degrees from the Catholic University of America (Ph.D. in world politics, 2014), the New York University School of Law (J.D., 2002), and Wake Forest University (B.A. in communication, 1999). He also received a Goldman Sachs Foundation 10,000 Small Businesses Certificate of Entrepreneurship in 2018.