Alissa Knight

CEO, Brier & Thorn, LLC

Alissa Knight is the CEO and President at Brier & Thorn and is also a senior fellow at the Asymmetric Warfare and Intelligence Center (AWIC). In addition to her other roles, Ms. Knight is also the Chair on the Brier & Thorn Board of Directors and was also recently nominated to the Chair for the Committee on Asymmetric Warfare with the Center for Women in Homeland Security. As a serial entrepreneur, Ms. Knight started and sold two previous startup companies in the security space in two separate M&A transactions totaling $8 Million to publicly traded companies in New Zealand and British Colombia. She has experience in Mergers & Acquisitions, international business operations, fund raising in subordinate debt financing and private equity investments, as well as venture capital in fund raising campaigns of more than $40 Million. Prior to her role at Brier & Thorn, Ms. Knight started and managed a private equity fund that focused in early-stage private equity investments. Ms. Knight manages all aspects of the company's business operations and also takes an active tactical operational role in both the Latin America and the Middle East theaters as part of the company's Intelligence Operations Group in Clandestine Services. She has written over a dozen intelligence reports and has published numerous white papers in counter terrorism and counter insurgency. Her focus is in Irregular Warfare, complex operations, civilian surges, and asymmetric threats to our operating forces. Ms. Knight has been trained by Lockheed Martin, Crisis Response International, and Trojan Securities in HUMINT and OSSINT Intelligence collection, tactical firearms, PSD/Convoy Security, Counter Actions, SERE, CQB/CQC (Israeli and British), Force Protection, Hostage Rescue, and Combat Surveillance and Counter Surveillance operations. Prior to her career in Intelligence, she worked as a defense contractor in the information security space in cyber warfare for over 16 years. During her career, she published over two dozen white papers, developed a Bayesian Intrusion Detection System proposal for the United States Air Force Distributed Mission Operations Network (DMO) and built security infrastructures for intranets, extranets, and SCADA systems. Her background in information security was a natural segue into working for the Intelligence Community performing intelligence collection and analysis of state-sponsored terrorism and use of the Internet by terrorists as a new strategic domain for exercise of power. Alissa is currently attending American Military University majoring in Intelligence Studies with a concentration in Intelligence Operations and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies.