Heather Marie Vitale

PENN KEMBLE DEMOCRACY FORUM FELLOWS

Heather Marie Vitale is an operations research analyst at Schafer Corporation supporting the Department of Homeland Security on nuclear and radiological issues. She previously served as a research analyst with Strategic Analysis supporting the Department of Defense, and as a research assistant at the National Defense University (NDU). Heather Marie’s work focuses primarily on Islamist terrorism; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons; cybersecurity; Middle Eastern affairs; American foreign policy; and women in Islam. She co-authored an article with Dr. James Keagle at NDU on ISIS’s use of social media and projections of power in Iraq and Syria, and authored forthcoming publications about “big data” and cyberterrorism. Heather Marie holds a master’s in political science from George Mason University, where she specialized in international security and Islamist terrorism. She also completed graduate coursework in Middle Eastern studies at the Harvard Extension School, and has a bachelor’s in political communication from Emerson College. She proudly hails from New England.

Click here to return to the full list of 2016-17 Penn Kemble Fellows