After graduating as an NES major and College Scholar in '02, I moved back to the Washington, DC area to work as an international affairs fellow at the American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit advocacy organization. The following year, I enrolled in a master's program at Johns Hopkins University-School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with a triple concentration: in Middle East Studies (under Dr. Fouad Ajami); Strategic Studies; and International Economics, and spent an eye-opening summer in Sanaa, Yemen, where I interned for the Government Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation. After earning a master's degree from SAIS in '05, I headed to Cairo, Egypt, where I enrolled in the full-year Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) at American University in Cairo, followed by a year in Fes, Morocco as a David L. Boren Graduate Fellow. In 2007, I joined the Department of Defense as a regional analyst, and served as a subject matter expert covering political and security developments in various countries throughout the Arab world, including Syria, Iraq, Arabian Peninsula countries, and the greater Levant. I also completed a 3-year rotation to the National Counterterrorism Center, where I researched and briefed White House and State Department senior officials on religious radicalization and extremism in the Middle East and Africa. Currently, I continue to pursue a focus on the Middle East at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where I serve as Middle East-Africa Branch chief in the Deputy Directorate for Analysis and Warning. There I manage a team that provides round-the-clock regional expertise, insights and analysis to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense. I live with my loving wife Marjie and three children, Danny (10), Gabby (8) and Anna (5), in Chevy Chase, Maryland, one mile from my mother's house where I was born and raised.
