Jim Ellsworth

About Jim Ellsworth

Dr. James Ellsworth holds a unique record of parallel, 30-year, distinguished leadership careers in BOTH education & national security. He is a noted scholar of innovation, evaluation & learning systems design, who has twice created and led award-winning online programs at accredited, postsecondary educational institutions, written a key text on educational change, and held international governance roles in two of his field’s most prominent professional associations. A Military Intelligence leader throughout the same period—who amassed a record of research on complex operations & national strategy on the faculty of the Naval War College before his selection for a General Officer/Senior Executive level role leading development of a competency-based credentialing strategy for Geospatial Intelligence—he retired from the military phase of his career in 2013 to teach, consult & pursue his scholarship in both fields.As a teenager in the late 1970s, he received his first Qur\'an from his father, who was working for the Saudi government as a personnel consultant. On 9/11, that made him among the U.S. military and intelligence communities\' seniormost leaders who\'d READ the Qur\'an, and could pull it off the shelf & say,\"Hey, this stuff isn\'t in there!\" Thus began a decade & a half\'s work studying the Qur\'an, ahadith, fiqh & aqidah and helping to lead the counternarrative fight-first, against Da\'esh & al-Qa\'ida and subsequently against the symbiotic narrative peddled by western Islamophobes. At the end of Ramadan in 2019, he made his shahada in a ceremony officiated by Shaykh As-Sayyid Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi, and formally became his student.Specialties: Public Policy, Learning Sciences & Strategy, Human & Organizational Performance Improvement, Instructional Systems Design, Distance & Blended Learning, Educational Change & Innovation, Program Evaluation (social sciences), Professional Ethics, Civic Education, National Security, Future of Armed Conflict, Narrative & Counternarrative Strategy, Open Source Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence, Intelligence Futures, Islam.Contact him directly or via InMail to engage his services in any of these capacities.

Experience

1. Independent Researcher and Consultant

   Us Army

   Jan 2013 — Present · Washington, DC, US

   As a retired senior leader, serve in paid and pro bono advisory & editorial roles on national-level Army and Intelligence strategic initiatives, such as enterprise-level education & training system resilience post-COVID-19, roadmap to a ubiquitous learning ecosystem, Integrated Research Project #10 (Strategic Direction) off the 20••••17 Army Key Strategic Issues List (KSIL), the Army Learning Model & Strategy (ALM & ALS), Army Warfighting Challenges (AWfC), and efforts to understand & counter the strategic narratives of violent extremism. Clients include the Army War College, Army Capabilities Integration Center, Headquarters, Army University, and the Training & Doctrine Command DCS/G-2. Publish and present for national & international audiences on national security ethics, learning sciences & strategy, and evidence-based models for systematically improving & validly measuring the performance of enterprise- and society-level systems.

Education

• Clarkson University

  BS, Marketing and Computer-Based Management Systems

  1983 — 1986

• Syracuse University

  MBA, Management Information Systems

  1986 — 1988

• U.S. Naval War College

  MA, National Security and Strategic Studies

  2000 — 2003

• Syracuse University

  Ph.D., Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation

  1988 — 1998

Skills

• Interagency Coordination
• Information Assurance
• Command
• Change Management
• Public Policy
• Electronic Warfare
• Homeland Security
• Human Performance
• Distance Learning
• Policy
• Training
• Strategic Leadership
• Emergency Management
• Leading Change
• Security Clearance
• Intelligence Community
• Organizational Leadership
• Program Evaluation
• Leadership Development
• Education Reform
• Military Operations
• Instructional Design
• Army
• Proposal Writing
• International Relations
• Program Management
• Security
• Professional Ethics
• Military
• Higher Education
• Intelligence Analysis
• Sigint
• Instructional Technology
• Government
• Certification Development
• Instructor-Led Training
• Leadership
• Joint Operations
• Intelligence
• Force Protection