Consulting Practicums

For the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate CTED) of the United Nations, CGA has collaborated on 16 projects over the last 8 years, on a range of terrorism and counter terrorism topics. They include ISIS use of social media to recruit and incite; how UN member states deal with terrorist fighters returning from Iraq and Syria; how the UN can work with the private sector and academic institutions to track emerging terrorist threats; the role of technology in countering terrorist threats; and currently, the rise of right-wing terrorism and member state responses. 

We have written papers, held workshops and conferences, delivered briefings, and built processes for collaborating with non-UN experts, firms and state political actors. These deliverables have shaped UN Security Council resolutions, made their way into CTED briefings for member states and other UN bodies, and helped CTED keep abreast of emerging trends and disseminate these trend reports to their global network of experts.

In close cooperation with IHOM’s Executive Director, students conduct research and analysis of current and past peacebuilding and reconciliation processes and practices in IHOM’s current focus countries—Bosnia Herzegovina, DRC, Nepal, and the US—specific to current IHOM projects that focus on trauma healing, capacity-building, women’s self-empowerment, child soldiers, adverse childhood experiences, sexual violence in the US military, and the ethnic/religious composition of a country’s political institutions.

Deliverables were determined by our client’s needs, principally the objective to facilitate effective trauma healing and healing of memory workshops, and included three reference/background chapters for IHOM workshop facilitators, and two workshop intake surveys for women survivors of sexual violence in the DRC, in partnership with the DRC-based NGO, Heal Africa.

Students support the International Coordinating Team (based in New York) of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) to research questions regarding how to build the effectiveness and influence of women peacebuilders in conflict resolution and long-term peacebuilding in war-affected countries. The GNWP is a coalition of women’s groups from conflict-affected countries that advocates for women’s leadership to be at the core of all efforts to prevent or resolve conflict. Past projects have focused on countries like Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, the Philippines, South Sudan, and have examined the extent to which gender provisions in peace agreements result in improvements in women’s rights after war, the extent to which young women are engaged in national efforts to bring youth into peace work, the impact of COVID restrictions on women peacebuilders, the impact of digital communications technology on women human rights defenders, and the extent to which cyber security frameworks address gender issues.

Students work collaboratively on projects that center on the Global Engagement Center’s mission of exposing and countering state and non-state actor propaganda and disinformation that “undermines or influences the policies, security, or stability of the US and its allies and partner nations.” Previous projects have focused on country and private sector approaches to authenticating, detecting, and labeling synthetic content, identifying the nexus between state and non-state actor disinformation as it pertains to the rise of racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism, investigating what vulnerabilities make individuals and entire societies more susceptible to disinformation, mapping media literacy education and potential partners, responding to Islamist and far-right violent extremism in the Western Balkans, and countering radicalization and recruitment into terrorism in Somalia and Nigeria. Deliverables are determined in close consultation with the Global Engagement Center and have included infographics and reports that are disseminated across US government agencies and to US embassies and partners abroad to inform policy and practice. As the Global Engagement Center is an interagency body, participants also have the opportunity to share their findings with an inter-agency US government audience and relevant partners are brought into projects accordingly.

Students provide hands-on research and consultation on a topic of critical importance to New York City Cyber Command (NYC3). NYC Cyber Command is a centralized organization created by NYC Executive Order to lead the City’s cyber defense efforts, working across more than 100 agencies and offices to prevent, detect, respond, and recover from cyber threats. NYC Cyber Command is committed to protecting NYC infrastructure and critical systems from malicious attacks through the use of the latest technologies, public-private partnerships, and regular training and exercises for City employees.

Deliverables: Executive level recommendations for policies and procedures as well as action plans for how NYC3 can best provide cybersecurity services to the City of New York.

Description of Projects: unique and forward-thinking educational model engages teams of university students to solve some of the nation’s toughest national security and defense problems using Lean LaunchPad® principles. H4D is offered at premier private institutions of higher education, large public universities, and small public and private universities at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

H4D pushes students beyond their comfort zones and stretches them intellectually and practically as they navigate the difficulties that naturally arise from working in multidisciplinary teams into an unfamiliar (to many) field at a faster tempo than what is common in most university classes.

Government problem sponsors value the course for the perspective and ingenuity the students bring in responding to problems, often finding that input from the student teams allows them to arrive at a not-yet-thought-of solution.

More information can be found at the Hacking for Defense Website: https://www.h4d.us