Jennifer Counter is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is currently a vice president at Orbis Operations, where she advises friendly foreign governments on national-security matters. She splits her time between the Middle East and her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to Orbis Operations, Counter was a vice president at Ipsos, where she oversaw a team that melded technology, big data, and new research means. Prior to that, she was a foreign service officer in US State Department’s Regional Affairs Office and a US Air Force intelligence officer. While with the State Department, she focused much of her efforts on strategic communications at grassroots-level civil society organizations and with media outlets to advocate for US policy positions on counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and other transnational issues in South Asia, East Africa, and Western Europe.

Counter received her BA in political science from Boston University in 2001, an MA in global diplomacy from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 2017, an MS in strategic communications from Columbia University in 2019, and an MA in political psychology from Arizona State University in 2022.