Drew N. Peterson is a veteran foreign policy practitioner with extensive experience in both government and the private sector. As founder and managing principal of Trefoil Strategies Ltd., he provides expert risk advisory and strategic planning services to a variety of clients, with a focus on geopolitical and investment risk. He concurrently serves as Director of Geopolitical and Regulatory Risk at 2430 Group, an operational nonprofit dedicated to defending America's critical technologies, infrastructure, data, and intellectual property from industrial espionage by state-sponsored adversaries. He teaches in an adjunct capacity at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.Mr. Peterson has served for more than a decade at the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the White House’s National Security Council, working at the intersection of diplomacy, national security, economic policy, emerging technologies, and strategy. Most recently, as senior advisor to the director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, he led an initiative to plan for future risk reduction measures. Earlier in his career, he served as the Department of State’s liaison to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). As National Security Council Director for Southern Africa and Regional Economy from 2019 to 2020, he coordinated the “Prosper Africa” initiative to bolster the resilience of African partners against predatory trade, investment, procurement, and lending practices. In the course of 12 years as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, he also served as an assistant or speechwriter to four U.S. ambassadors, the Special Presidential Envoy for Northern Ireland, and the Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, in addition to fulfilling political-military, public diplomacy, and consular roles at U.S. embassies in Israel, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania.Mr. Peterson holds a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a master's degree from Harvard University. He is a recipient of the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award and Meritorious Honor Award, a Pickering Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University. He is fluent in French, Russian, and Hebrew, and has varying levels of familiarity with a handful of other languages.