Todd G. Veazie, J39 Strategic Multilayer Assessment
Todd Veazie serves as Director of the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) office in the Joint Staff’s Operations Directorate. SMA supports senior military leaders by assessing complex operational environments and technical challenges that require collaborative multi-agency, multidisciplinary, mixed-method approaches to expand strategic horizons and inform effective strategy.
Prior to reentering public service, Todd was the Chief Operating Officer at Kiernan Group Holdings, Inc a global consulting firm specializing in law enforcement, risk services, defense, intelligence, emergency management, and critical infrastructure resiliency. Todd served for thirty years in the United States Navy attaining the rank of Captain. He transitioned to the federal executive service and was assigned to the National Counterterrorism Center. At NCTC he led a talented team that provided dispassionate, whole of government assessments and strategic decision support to the President and his National Security Council staff.
He was born in Washington D.C. and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Science from the University of South Carolina and was commissioned in 1986. After commissioning he reported to Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training and graduated in Class 140. As a Naval Special Warfare (NSW) SEAL officer he served in East and West Coast SEAL Teams and deployed to over fifty countries around the globe. He led Naval Special Warfare formations in the execution of combat and peacetime special operations missions in Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Western Pacific, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Command tours include SEAL Team SEVEN in San Diego, Naval Special Warfare Unit THREE in Bahrain as well as duty as Commodore, Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR in Virginia Beach.
Todd served in numerous staff assignments that include the Executive Director of Joining Forces in the Office of the First Lady at the White House, personnel policy at the Bureau of Naval Personnel, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Resources, Requirements, and Assessments (J8) for the Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command and in the Operations Directorate (J3) on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. He is a 2003 Graduate of the National War College earning a Master’s Degree in National Security Strategy.
Allison Astorino-Courtois
Dr. Astorino-Courtois is NSI’s Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) and Executive Vice President. She has served as co-chair of a National Academy of Science’s study on Strategic Deterrence and served as the deterrence lead on the National Research Council’s recent Space Deterrence and Protection study for the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense. For the past 10 years Dr. Astorino-Courtois also has served as technical lead and provided the conceptual models and analytic frameworks for rapid turn-around projects sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. These efforts include design of a “Rich Contextual Understanding” analytic approach for for the Intelligence Chief and Commander of Allied forces in Afghanistan (Com ISAF); development of NSI’s Stability Model (StaM) as a methodology for conducting provincial assessments for the ISAF Joint Command; assessments of national and sub-national drivers of political, economic, and social instability for USCENTCOM, USPACOM, USAFRICOM, and the intelligence community; and projects on deterrence and decision assessment models for USSTRATCOM. Previously, Dr. Astorino-Courtois was a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations at Texas A&M University where her research focus was cognitive aspects of foreign policy decision making. She has also taught at Creighton University and as a visiting instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Astorino-Courtois earned her Ph.D. in International Relations/Research Methodologies from NYU. Her BA is in political science from Boston College.
Lawrence Kuznar
I have a background in discourse analysis, decision theory, and mathematical and computational modeling. I have supported many SMA projects, as well as work for AFRL, the Army Corps of Engineers, and our private customers. Our discourse work has been used to provide anticipatory insights into violent non-state actors such as ISIL and the Taliban, and state actors as varied as Iran, Pakistan, India and North Korea. I also contributed to NSI’s computational modeling of social conflict. In addition to my position at NSI, I am also a professor of anthropology at Indiana University – Purdue University, Fort Wayne, and my published work can be found in journals such as American Anthropologist, Political Studies, Current Anthropology, Evolution and Human Behavior and Social Science Computer Review.
Katy Lindquist
Dr. Katy Lindquist is NSI’s Principal Research Scientist with a background in political science with broad and diverse methodological training in quantitative and qualitative approaches to social science. Her substantive expertise is in national and international security, which she uses to support DoD’s Strategic Multilayer Assessment work. Prior to joining the NSI team, she was a principal investigator and faculty researcher at START (the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) at the University of Maryland, and she has also served as a consultant for public and private sector clients. Her doctorate in Political Science is from the University of Chicago, where she studied international relations and comparative politics, and her BA is from Dartmouth College.
Sarah Canna
I apply my open source analytic skills to regions of vital concern to US Combatant Commands, particularly the Middle East and South Asia. To help military planners understand the complex socio-cultural dynamics at play in evolving conflict situations, I developed a Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa) tool, which is designed to rapidly respond to emergent crises by pulsing NSI’s extensive subject matter expert (SME) network to provide deep, customized, multidisciplinary analysis for defense and industry clients. Prior to joining NSI, I completed my Master’s degree from Georgetown University in Technology and Security Studies. I hold a translation certificate in Spanish from American University and have been learning Dari for two years.