David Kilcullen

Dave Kilcullen is a bestselling author and scholar, and a former professional soldier and diplomat. He is Founder and Chairman of Caerus Global Solutions, a strategic research and design consultancy based in Washington DC, and Chairman of First Mile Geo, a geospatial analysis start-up that works with communities in disaster and conflict-affected areas to create participative maps which guide humanitarian assistance efforts.

Before founding Caerus, Dave served 24 years as an infantry officer in the Australian Army, then with the U.S. State Department, where he was chief strategist in the Counterterrorism Bureau, Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, and then Senior Advisor for Counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

He advises world institutions, governments, businesses, NGOs and local communities across the globe, while working on complex humanitarian and security challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Sri Lanka, Colombia and elsewhere. Foreign Policy named him as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009.

Dave is the author of numerous scholarly articles and of three books: the PROSE Award winner and Washington Post bestseller The Accidental Guerrilla (2009), Counterinsurgency (2010), and Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, which won the 2013 PROSE award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in Government and Politics.

Specialties: field research, political risk analysis, urban design, GIS mapping, training and education, strategic advisory services, development monitoring and evaluation, alternative and distributed energy, stabilization and reconstruction.