Rod Schoonover works at the seam between Earth system science and security analysis. He helped bring ecological and climate-related risks into the core of U.S. national security institutions and now focuses on building a broader ecological security framework for the Anthropocene. He is Founder and CEO of Ecological Futures Group and Co-Founder of The Ecosecurity Council.

Selected Roles and Affiliations

Ecological Futures Group (Founder & CEO) · Georgetown University (adjunct, School of Foreign Service) · CSIS (nonresident Fellow) · SIPRI · National Intelligence Council · U.S. State Department (Bureau of Intelligence and Research) · Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center · Ecological Society of America

Recent Highlights

• Updating Mental Models of Risk for a Complex World — Issues in Science and Technology · 2025. On why existing risk frameworks fail to capture cascading, systemic, and ecological threats — and what’s needed to replace them.
• Understanding the Polycrisis — Global Sustainability, Cambridge University Press · 2025. A contributed chapter situating ecological disruption within the broader polycrisis framework, co-edited by Adam Tooze and Thomas Hale.
• The Security Threat That Binds Us — Council on Strategic Risks. On how ecological disruption constitutes a foundational and shared security threat that transcends conventional geopolitical divisions.
• The National Security Risks We’re Not Prepared For — The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens · Episode 183. A wide-ranging conversation on ecological security, actorless threats, and the limits of conventional risk frameworks.
• Why I Had to Speak Out on Climate Change — The New York Times · July 2019. Op-ed on resigning from the Trump administration after the White House blocked a classified climate security assessment from Congress.

Dr. Schoonover has spent a decade in senior roles in the US intelligence community, both at the National Intelligence Council and the State Department, where he helped establish ecological and environmental issues within the core national security framework of the U.S. government. He has provided numerous written and oral security analyses on climate change, ecological disruption, water security, food security, wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, illegal fishing, polar issues, and a number of related science and technology issues.

Dr. Schoonover speaks on ecological security and Earth-system risk to diverse audiences worldwide and on media outlets including CBS, CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, among others.

In addition to steering EFG, he is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, an Associate Senior Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 2022, Dr. Schoonover was a Resident Fellow at the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center for a project examining the effects of the intersection of climate change, ecological disruption, and antimicrobial resistance.

In government, Dr. Schoonover was a four-time recipient of the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and received multiple awards for excellence in analysis from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In 2015, Dr. Schoonover was awarded the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research Analyst of the Year, its highest honor, for outstanding analysis of scientific and environmental issues with significant impact on U.S. national security and foreign policy.

Prior to civil service, Dr. Schoonover was a tenured Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He earned his PhD in complex systems physics from the University of Michigan. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter, loves noise pop and country-punk music, plays acoustic guitar about as well as he plays electric, motorcycles when he can, and reads scientific journals both professionally and for pleasure.