BA, Yale University; MSt, Oxford University; PhD, London School of Economics. Worked for the United Nations and the European Union in Somalia and Kosovo; direct experience in over two dozen conflict zones. Former Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Defence Studies, King's College London. Co-directed the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC. Served for nearly six years in the US Department of State: Senior Adviser, Bureau of Counterterrorism; then Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations; finally, Chief of Staff to General John Allen, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter-ISIL. 30 November 2015, became Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Author of numerous publications, including Democracy by Force: US Military Intervention in the Post-Cold War World (2000), which was short-listed for the RUSI Westminster Medal in Military History.