Team

Colonel (retired) Ron Sargent

Ron Sargent served over 30 years in the U.S. Army and spent his last 18 years as a Southeast Asia Foreign Area Officer. Highlights of his career include an assignment as the Defense Cooperation Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Timor-Leste where he assisted a former guerrilla force as it transitioned to become a professional, conventional military; routinely engaged Timorese senior leadership; and coordinated U.S. activities with United Nations peacekeepers. He also served as a military professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies where he worked closely with security sector officials from throughout the Indo-Pacific region, to include Oceania. This entailed training on policy themes ranging from security cooperation, comprehensive crisis management, humanitarian assistance, and security responses to terrorism. During his final assignment as the U.S. Army Attaché to Malaysia, he worked closely with Malaysian Defense Ministry and Armed Forces leadership on bilateral and multilateral training and operational initiatives. He also engaged regularly with U.S. policymakers, Malaysian think tanks, and members of the international diplomatic community. He also served in assignments in the former Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Korea, and Afghanistan.

Ron speaks Malaysian and Indonesian, and possesses a MA in Southeast Asian Studies from Ohio University and a MS in National Security Strategy from the U.S. National Defense University. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Vanderbilt University Peabody School.