Dr. Greg Brown

Dr. Greg Brown is the founding and executive director of The Alliance Futures Initiative. He brings nearly two decades of analytic work for the US national security community, four years building a new think tank presence into a serious policy voice, and the kind of regional fluency Washington talks about valuing but rarely invests in building.

Before launching TAFI, Brown spent nearly two decades supporting research, analysis, and outreach programs across the US national security community. He developed research projects, designed and ran wargames and exercises, and directed regional and functional expert panels for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Intelligence Council, the Federal Foresight Community of Interest, and other national security agencies. That work gave him direct, sustained exposure to how Washington consumes intelligence, weighs alliance and partner commitments, and thinks — or fails to think — about strategic futures.

Brown is an authority on political demography, comparative foreign policy, and Indo-Pacific security.

Since 2005, he has served as Adjunct Professor at the Center for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Studies in Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he teaches courses on strategic competition in the Pacific, migration and conflict, national identity, and comparative foreign policy. He regularly advises undergraduate and graduate capstone projects and has served as a faculty reviewer for Truman, Marshall, and Rhodes Scholarship candidates.

His consulting and fellowship appointments reflect the breadth of his regional network. Brown has served as an instructor for the State Department's Foreign Service Institute course on Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands; as a consultant for Freedom House, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, and the UN Millennium Project's program on transnational organized crime.

He has held appointments as a RICE Fellow at the East-West Center, a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne's Australian Centre, and an Australian National University Parliamentary Fellow in the Office of the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Multiculturalism.

His analysis and commentary on Indo-Pacific security, political demography, and alliance dynamics have appeared in The Economist, Nikkei Asia, the South China Morning Post, Radio Free Asia, Breaking Defense, Voice of America, the Mainichi Shimbun, The Australian, and the New Zealand Herald.

His published work includes pieces in The Strategist, The National Interest, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Political Science, and People and Place.

Brown received his Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was an Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award finalist. He previously held teaching and research appointments at Southwestern University and UT, Austin.

His family ties run from Manila, Melbourne, and Tokyo to Portland, Palo Alto, and Philadelphia to Copenhagen, Cape Town, and Zurich — a geography that makes international relations personal, not just theoretical. He remains the only member of his immediate family to avoid acquiring dual citizenship.

Recent Work