I am currently the host of the Disorder Podcast (longlisted for the British Podcast Awards 2026), Senior Analyst for Emerging Challenges at the NATO Defense College Foundation, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Podcasting Fellow at the New Books Network, President of Libya-Analysis LLC, and a Board Member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Tripoli. I have written two academic books -- Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder  (2021 Hurst/OUP) and The 2011 Libyan Uprisings and the Struggle for the Post-Qadhafi Future (2013 Palgrave). My articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. I also appear regularly on the BBC, Sky, CNN, Fox, and other broadcast outlets.

Outside of geopolitics and podcasting, backgammon is my true passion, and I see the game as a perfect microcosm for life’s challenges. Backgammon mirrors truly how life works: skill, fate, competition, cooperation, character, and learning from one’s mistakes all play their part. I have been very lucky in the game, have earned some of that luck, and am filled with immense gratitude for what the game has given me. I won the Silver Medal at The 2026 World Championships of Backgammon, was also the 2nd place finisher at both the 2024 and 2025 World Championships of Speedgammon, and in 2018 won the World Championship of Doubles Backgammon. Aside from those results-based achievements, in 2024, I achieved the performance-based rank of Grandmaster of Backgammon, (which is judged based on computer analysis of one’s decisions) placing me among the world's top 100 players and placing among the top amateurs.

I also write about gambling's connections to geopolitics.

 Outside of backgammon but drawing a similar range of skills (especially memory and focus), I was also one of only a handful of people to compete for both the Oxford and Cambridge Blind Wine Tasting teams, and I founded Birthplace of Wine Experience LLC to help travellers discover Georgian wine.

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If you are interested in a potted biography of how someone could develop such an eclectic range of interests, read on:

Born in Manhattan in 1980 and raised in New Jersey, I majored in biology at Williams College. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, I abandoned my senior thesis, grew a beard, and moved to Beirut. Over the next two years, I studied Arabic in Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. On the cusp of a linguistic breakthrough in 2003, my parents forbade me from continuing my studies in Yemen, so I hitchhiked to Iraq to witness the early days of the American occupation. 

In 2004–5, I was a Fulbright Scholar in Syria, where I was kidnapped twice—once by Kurdish militiamen and once by the Assad regime. I later was recruited away from Oxford and induced to move to Libya in 2008 to help Western businesses navigate the late Qadhafi-era economic reforms. Later as the Arab Spring reverberated around the Middle East in 2011, I drew upon my experiences in Tripoli to advise Western policymakers, appear frequently in the print and broadcast media, and set up my own consulting firm. These distractions notwithstanding, I managed to complete an M.St. in Global and Imperial History at St Antony’s College, Oxford. At the University of Cambridge, where I was a PhD student from 2011-2015, I was not so lucky.

Having abandoned my doctoral thesis, I founded a charity, Eye on ISIS, dedicated to promulgating accurate real-time information about the jihadi threat in Libya. In 2017-18, I returned to Washington, DC, to serve as the Executive Director of the U.S.-Libya Business Association (USLBA). Witnessing firsthand how Trump-era DC encouraged USLBA’s Fortune 500 member companies to engage in corruption and neo-mercantilism, I resigned my post, sold my house in DC, invented the concept of the Enduring Disorder, and vowed to become a European citizen. In 2020, I was awarded the UK Global Talent Visa after receiving the endorsement of the British Academy recognising me as a ‘global leader in his subfield’. I now call North London home where I am burrowed under the hills of Hampstead trying to dodge the tragic and chaotic state of the world :)

For a full CV, please click here.