Elizabeth Neumann
Chief Strategy Officer, Moonshot; Author, Kingdom of Rage
2021, 2023, 2024, 2026
Elizabeth Neumann is a national security and violence prevention expert, former senior government official, and author whose work sits at the intersection of public safety, healthy civic culture, and the role of faith and community institutions in preventing violence and extremism. She serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Moonshot, where she leads the organization’s U.S. work in violence prevention and safety. Her portfolio includes AI safety, threat monitoring, and programs that help governments, communities, and institutions prevent political violence, targeted violence, and other serious online and offline harms.
Elizabeth is the author of Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, winner of the 2025 Christian Book Award for Faith and Culture. Drawing on her professional experience and her own Christian faith, the book examines how religious identity and community can serve as powerful protective factors—providing meaning, belonging, moral formation, and relationships that strengthen resilience against violence. It also explores how those same forces can be distorted to deepen grievance, exclusion, political idolatry, and extremism. Her work calls faith communities to recover their distinctive role in protecting human dignity, resisting dehumanization, and building the relationships that make prevention possible.
Elizabeth served in government across three presidential administrations: on the inaugural staff of the White House Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush; as an advisor to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during the Obama administration; and as Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.
At DHS, she oversaw policy and program teams addressing terrorism and targeted violence, hostile nation-states, transnational criminal organizations, human trafficking, aviation security, and security screening and vetting. She led the development of the prevention framework codified in the 2019 DHS Strategy for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence and helped build bipartisan support for significantly expanding federal investment in domestic terrorism prevention. For this work, she received the DHS Outstanding Service Silver Medal.
Elizabeth is a national security contributor for ABC News and a Senior Fellow at CNA. She chairs the board of the National Immigration Forum and co-founded the Council on National Security and Immigration. She is a Civil Society Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Elizabeth lives in Colorado with her husband, two children, and their dog, Noelle.
The Summit was more than empty words – it made clear that a solution-driven approach is the only way to fight hate. That’s why the working group activities, which are results driven are going to be critical in defeating violent extremism. The Summit brought together the best minds in government, private sector, academia, and civil society. Being surrounded by these experts sparked new ideas – some of which I’ve already implemented or have written about.
