Dr. Whitney Grespin has worked in contingency contracting, educational programming, and international development on five continents, having earned her PhD at King’s College London’s Defence Studies Department after holding a three-year Graduate Teaching Assistant studentship at the UK Defence Academy’s Joint Services Command and Staff College. Dr. Grespin is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Future Conflict (IFC) in tandem with the Department of Military and Strategic Studies and the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at United States Air Force Academy. Previously, she worked as an advisor to the Somali Ministry of Defense, before which she supported the U.S. Army War College’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) as a Peace Operations Analyst. Her research interests focus on the U.S. use of contractors to train partner militaries/deliver security assistance.