Amy Zalman

Amy Zalman is a global security futurist dedicated to leveraging the power of narrative to accelerate transformational change by leaders and organizations. She is the principal owner of the Strategic Narrative Institute LLC which provides consulting services and training to leaders and institutions seeking to strengthen their ability to understand, manage and leverage future change. She is currently also an adjunct Professor of Strategic Foresight Methods at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and is a member of the Board of Visitors of Air University (at Maxwell Air Force Base) and a Board Director of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.

During the course of her career, Amy has served as a leader, teacher, author and consultant in public, private and non-profit sectors. She is the former Chief Executive Officer and President of the World Future Society, the world’s first and largest membership organization for futurists and advocacy on behalf of future-critical issues. From 2014-2016, she led the 50-year old organization through a transition from a publishing business model to a global platform for membership and thought leadership. She reorganized the internal structure, refreshed the Board of Directors, revitalized global brand value and raised net profit significantly. From 2012-2014, Amy served as the inaugural Department of Defense Chair of Information Integration and professor of security strategy at the National War College in Washington DC, with the mandate to advance the teaching of “the information element of national power” to the future strategic leaders of the United States. From 2007 – 2012, she worked at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC, now Leidos), a Washington DC based Fortune 500 science and technology firm, and a founding partner of Oryx Communications, which supported organizations expanding into the Middle East and North Africa. She has additionally served on the faculties of New York University, Cornell University and the New School University in New York.

Amy has maintained a career-long focus on the impacts of change in the global security environment, such as shifts in global balance of power, defense and intelligence related issues, and information security, and on the critical roles of cultures, communication, narrative and myth in generating change and innovation.

These are frequent topics in her role as a keynote and public speaker, and as an author. In the past several years, her audiences have included the Atlantic Council Global Strategy Forum, Forbes Mexico Summit, KBS Korea Future Forum, the U.S. Library of Congress, the G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance Summit in Istanbul, Global Reporting Initiative Corporate Sustainability Trends in Rome, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, US Congress, USSOCOM, DoD Highlands Forums, the Marine Corps Public Affairs Leadership Conference, the Heritage Foundation, TEDx, and others.

She is a former Fulbright scholar in Jordan, and a former fellow at the EastWest Institute in New York. She is proficient in Arabic and Hebrew.