Driving operational results. Informing consequential decisions. Directing data collection.
Glawe Strategic Advisors helps CEOs, boards, investors, and governments assess national security and geopolitical exposure, identify opportunity, set priorities, and organize the enterprise to act.
David leads every engagement personally and brings in trusted specialists when the work requires, remaining accountable for the result.
Every assessment and implementation engagement concludes with accountable owners, defined measures, and a resourced plan.
Many organizations have a data strategy. Few have tied it to the mission, the outputs leadership needs, and the oversight required to succeed. This assessment answers six questions:
In intelligence terms, the answers are collection priorities.
Client receives:
Why David. At the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, he led financial intelligence collection priorities for U.S. intelligence organizations. As DHS Under Secretary, his mission drew on hundreds of data sets, including flight, passenger, and cargo data on travel and trade across U.S. borders.
David gives investors and boards an independent assessment of nation-state, sanctions, supply-chain, and cross-border exposure, including transnational criminal organizations, corrupt government officials, and foreign intelligence influence. He draws on senior threat-finance leadership in the U.S. intelligence community and earlier experience as a licensed financial advisor.
David identifies the information leadership needs, how to obtain it, and where data and artificial intelligence investment matters most, beginning with the signature assessment above. People, not systems, remain accountable for outcomes.
Using the Mission Center Model, David aligns teams, resources, authority, and accountability around the outcome, with a single accountable executive and a resourced plan. He has done this from the inside, as a chief executive and as a senior government leader.
David explains how agencies set requirements, budget, buy, and partner, and builds a market strategy around real mission needs. For government leaders in the United States and abroad, he stands up or reorganizes intelligence and security functions around the Mission Center Model.
David assesses exposure, sets priorities, and coordinates the response through confidential board briefings, executive tabletop exercises, or direct support. As Under Secretary, he led the homeland intelligence response to nation-state threats, foreign influence campaigns, and cybersecurity threats, including National Terrorism Advisory System bulletins coordinated across the U.S. intelligence community.
Where to begin. Every engagement starts with an initial consultation, at no cost, to define the matter and recommend the right engagement.
Discuss a potential engagementDavid developed the Mission Center Model from an approach he first encountered on a joint special operations task force during the War on Terror. He has adapted and expanded it in every organization he has led since, making data and artificial intelligence part of the mission and bringing in policy, legal, and public affairs from the outset. It addresses disconnected functions, competing priorities, fragmented information, and unclear ownership, and rests on four principles.
David reorganized DHS Intelligence around Mission Centers. Before the 2018 midterm elections, he stood up the DHS Election Mission Center. He received the Department of Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal, its highest honor.
As Deputy National Intelligence Manager for Threat Finance and Transnational Organized Crime, he led financial intelligence collection priorities for U.S. intelligence organizations, including budget, coordination, and data solutions to expose illicit networks and sanctions evasion. A National Intelligence Collection Officer reported to him. He received the National Intelligence Superior Service Medal.
He restructured NICB around three mission areas: government affairs and advocacy, intelligence and operations, and education. In 2025 alone, NICB reviewed 208,956 questionable claim submissions and identified 1,647 new organized crime rings. Legislatures passed 83 bills to combat insurance fraud and crime.
For clients, the model starts with the result and works backward, aligning functions, people, data, and resources to deliver it. Priorities drive collection; collection drives operations.
David has testified before the Senate and the House in open and closed sessions, classified and unclassified, as Under Secretary of Homeland Security and as a private-sector CEO.
In July 2025, before the full Senate Judiciary Committee, he explained to Senator Chris Coons how the Mission Center Model could guide the federal coordination center proposed in the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act.
“That makes great sense to me.”
Senator Chris Coons, responding to David’s proposal for a federal coordination center
More than 100 national and local interviews on national security, transnational criminal organizations, and insurance fraud.
Interviewed byCNN • Fox Business • CNBC • NBC • CBS • ABC • PBS • NPR • USA Today
David is a former senior intelligence officer who has spent his career where intelligence turns into action. He deployed to Iraq and Africa in support of Joint Special Operations Command, led financial intelligence collection priorities for U.S. intelligence organizations at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and served as Chief Intelligence Officer of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
As a Senate-confirmed Under Secretary, he led intelligence across DHS’s 16 operational components, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CISA, and FEMA. He then led the National Insurance Crime Bureau, serving more than 1,200 insurers, with operations extending worldwide.
B.A., University of Northern Iowa · Certificate, Harvard University · Earlier in his career, held securities and insurance licenses as a financial advisor · Native of Davenport, Iowa; lives in Chicago with his family.
Contact David to discuss executive advisory, a defined project, a time-sensitive matter, or a speaking engagement. A brief note on the matter, timeline, and parties involved is sufficient. Inquiries are handled in confidence.
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