Dr. Aaron Presnall is a leader in multinational efforts to transform security cooperation systems and training. He is president of the Jefferson Institute, a non-partisan, not-for-profit corporation that creates and deploys digital tools integrated with research and education platforms to empower engaged access to information.

Presnall serves as a senior advisor to OSD P&R/Force Education and Training, and he is national chair of the NATO PfP Consortium ADL Working Group, spearheading multinational cooperation to innovate training capabilities. He has played a lead role in the operational integration of Learning and Performance Analytics in training events as the principal investigator on U.S. Army DEVCOM experiments in Bold Quest 23 & 24 and Vigorous Warrior 24, and in ADL Initiative projects for the Viking 18 and Viking 22 exercises. He is a leader in the premier DoD online learning and training/simulation conferences, serving on the Council of Chairs for NTSA’s iFest and on the I/ITSEC Education Subcommittee. Before founding the Jefferson Institute, Presnall held positions at the EastWest Institute office in Prague and was EastWest’s Regional Director of Southeast Europe in Belgrade. As part of his work at the Jefferson Institute, he has led projects for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; the Norwegian and Netherlands ministries of defense; and the Knight Foundation, German Marshall Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; and he has directed NSF Arctic Social Sciences data visualization and community engagement projects. Presnall was a lecturer at the University of Virginia for six years, teaching a course on promoting democracy in countries transitioning from authoritarian regimes.