David Kilcullen

Dave Kilcullen is a bestselling author and scholar, and former professional soldier and diplomat. He is Chairman of Caerus Global Solutions, a strategic research and design consultancy based in Washington DC and of First Mile GEO, a geospatial analysis start-up that works with communities in disaster and conflict-affected areas to create participative maps that guide humanitarian assistance. Before founding Caerus, Dave served for 25 years as an infantry officer in the Australian Army. He then went on to work 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 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Dave 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. Dave, who grew up in Sydney, is the author of the 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.