Jeanne Giraldo - Institute for Security Governance

Faculty

Ms. Jeanne Giraldo is the lead for Assessment, Planning, Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation in the Innovation & Learning (I&L) Division at the Institute for Security Governance (ISG).  In this role, Ms. Giraldo is responsible for leading the development of the US Department of Defense (DoD) approach to institutional capacity building (ICB) assessments, integrated ICB design and implementation, monitoring for results, and evaluation.  She supports efforts to develop a full-spectrum approach to security cooperation, which includes a focus on how ICB can be integrated into broader security cooperation planning processes and approaches.  In addition, she works with ISG functional and country project leads to ensure that problem-driven, results-oriented, approaches are taken to ICB support in key areas (e.g., cyber, logistics, intelligence and ISR, maritime security). 

Prior to her role at ISG, Ms. Giraldo was the founding program manager of the Defense Institution Reform Initiative (DIRI) and led the development of defense institution building (DIB) in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. With the merger of DIRI and the Wales Initiative Fund (WIF) DIB under the Defense Governance and Management Team (DGMT) in 2015, she became DGMT Knowledge Lead.  In that role, she continued her work with policymakers, planners, and implementers to develop the field of DIB, including the development of new approaches in support of training and equipping efforts that preceded the mandated 2017 NDAA reforms.

Prior to DIRI, Ms. Giraldo worked for a decade in the National Security Affairs Department at the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. She designed and taught courses on over a dozen different topics including counterinsurgency, terrorism financing, drug control, comparative politics, research methods, Latin American government and politics, and Latin American security issues.  She advised approximately 50 master's theses on a wide range of topics and engaged in practical research, curriculum development, and outreach in support of DoD and the interagency on a variety of issues.  Her publications include pieces on civil-military relations; terrorism financing; transnational crime; corruption; disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; and governance and reform in democratizing settings.

Ms. Giraldo studied Politics and Latin American Studies at Princeton University, where she played Division I soccer and met her husband.  She earned an MA in Government at Harvard University and undertook her doctoral training there.  She is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Portuguese.  She and her husband, Frank, coach travel and high school soccer and have one daughter.