Chris Bosley

Background

About Chris Bosley

I’m a social impact & peacebuilding leader with over 15 years of experience strengthening human security, defending democracy, & addressing political violence. My work sits at the intersection of violence prevention, community resilience, & civic engagement—linking people, ideas, & institutions into impact strategies and ecosystems that move from fragmentation to form & vision to scale. When I was 16, witnessing the events of 9/11 in a New Jersey high school classroom, I committed college & grad school to understanding how to protect our country from foreign threats & build a more stable global order. I served as a Navy intelligence officer through my 20s—leading diverse teams, advising the Pentagon's senior-most policymakers, & ensuring operations support strategic goals in high-pressure environments. I coordinated humanitarian relief in Haiti from deep inside the empty hull of an aircraft carrier still incomplete after overhaul—improvising for days to rig & activate dormant, unfamiliar systems that provided the real-time awareness commanders were demanding to deliver life-saving aid—restoring function in chaos. I dedicated my 30s to addressing global challenges that hard power alone couldn’t solve. At USIP, I led programs & teams that shaped global policy on post-ISIS reconciliation and preventing political violence. When Kabul fell, I spent weeks of sleepless days & nights helping evacuate more than 700 people, alongside a handful of equally exhausted & committed colleagues, rebuilding internal systems on the fly to coordinate chaotic movements & support partners at risk of persecution—restoring clarity amidst complexity. I led development of the first internationally recognized guidance on post-ISIS repatriation, and I created & scaled the RISE Action Guide—a globally adopted framework that integrates peacebuilding & behavioral health into a systems-based model that operates across every level of society to prevent violence & rebuild social cohesion across fractured communities—enabling the return of thousands of displaced families affected by ISIS. Looking ahead, I’m focused on applying the lessons of global peacebuilding to help strengthen democracy—both abroad & at home. By aligning behavioral health, civic infrastructure, justice, & institutional accountability into mutually reinforcing systems of impact, we can rebuild the connective tissue of healthy democracies. I believe community nodes—spaces that bring people together across divides—can become engines of prosocial engagement, social belonging, & civic trust.