Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a practitioner working at the intersection of homeland security, workforce development, and immersive simulation. He is the founder and chief executive officer of ExpertTheory (formerly Valens Games), a company focused on building next-generation tools designed to prepare the homeland security enterprise for decision-making in complex, high-uncertainty environments. Gartenstein-Ross pioneered a distinctive class of serious games known as Immersive Exercises, which place participants inside richly constructed worlds that mirror the information ecosystems faced by real-world practitioners. Participants must make consequential decisions under uncertainty, contend with second- and third-order effects, and exercise professional judgment. To support the broader adoption of immersive learning, ExpertTheory also developed the Providence platform, a game design and delivery system intended to make sophisticated simulations more accessible and scalable across government, academia, and industry. Gartenstein-Ross is also the co-author of a major 2025 National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) study, which – based on two years of rigorous mixed-methods assessment – analyzes the benefits of simulations and war games for homeland security workforce development. Prior to founding ExpertTheory, Gartenstein-Ross spent two decades working in the counterterrorism field, including roles with major think tanks, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Google. In 2019, he led Valens Global's work supporting the drafting, threat assessment, and development of priority actions for DHS’s Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence, which has guided the Department’s counterterrorism mission since its release. Gartenstein-Ross holds a Ph.D. in world politics from the Catholic University of America and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. He is the author or volume editor of more than 30 books and monographs published by both academic and popular presses.