LEADERSHIP AND STAFF

Program Director and Senior Research Fellow:

Lt. Col. John J. Nelson, U.S. Army-Retired

John serves as the Program Director and Senior Research Fellow for the Simons Center. John served in the U.S. Army for over 20 years in the Air Defense Artillery. After retiring from military service in 2007, he has led numerous analytical and organizational improvement efforts for the private sector, government, and military organizations. In 2015, he cofounded Morris, Nelson & Associates, LLC (MNA) and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. For the past several years, he has worked with several interagency organizations, law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels as well as non-profit organizations combatting Transnational Organized Crime. (Full bio)

Copy Editor

Jennifer Dessert

Jennifer serves as the editor for the CGSC Foundation Press and Simons Center publications. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree in technical writing from Northern Arizona University.

Ms. Dessert has more than 20 years of professional experience in technical writing, focusing on research and authoring, document design, and reviewing for the overall quality of deliverables for a wide variety of clients. She has experience in writing government contracts, creating content from existing data, providing developmental edits of content, reviewing marketing materials and procedural documents for clients, and creating reference documents. She also has experience working with writing teams in proposal and client delivery environments.