Richard Falkenrath

Senior Fellow, Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis

Bio Current as of June 17, 2015

Richard Falkenrath is the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis adjunct senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations. He also currently serves as principal of the Chertoff Group, LLC.

From 2006 to 2010, Falkenrath served as the New York City Police Department’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, where he strengthened the city’s overall effort to prevent, prepare for, and respond to terrorist attacks. Prior to joining the NYPD, Falkenrath served as the Stephen and Barbara Friedman senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. At that time, he was also an analyst for CNN. From 2001 to 2004, he held several leadership positions within the White House advising the president and his senior team. After September 11, 2001, Falkenrath was named special assistant to the president and senior director for policy and plans within the Office of Homeland Security. In 2003, he was promoted to deputy assistant to the president and deputy homeland security adviser. During his career, he has also worked at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

He was the founder and co-principal investigator of the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; a member of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction; a member of the Director’s Review Committee of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; a member of the board of Visitors of the National Emergency Management Institute; a member of the Director of Central Intelligence’s Nonproliferation Advisory Panel; a visiting research fellow at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik; and a consultant to the Defense Science Board and the RAND Corporation. He is also a member of the Aspen Strategy Group. Falkenrath is a summa cum laude graduate of Occidental College and holds a PhD from the department of war studies at King’s College London, where he was a British Marshall Scholar.