Candace Rondeaux is the Senior Director for the Future Frontlines program at New America, an open-source public intelligence service for next generation security and democratic resilience. She also directs the Planetary Politics initiative, a cross-disciplinary program that aims to find solutions to the wicked problems posed by digitization and decarbonization in a multipolar world.
Rondeaux is also a professor of practice with the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University and a faculty affiliate with ASU’s Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies. She is also lecturer and instructor in security studies at George Washington University and Tulane University. She has covered the rise of the Wagner Group since 2018, traveling to Ukraine and other hotspots frequently for field research. Fluent in Russian, she has testified in Congress on Russia’s strategic use of irregular paramilitaries around the world. Prior to joining New America, she led the RESOLVE Network for the U.S. Institute of Peace, a global research consortium on conflict and violent extremism. She served as a strategic adviser for the Lessons Learned Program at the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan, where she helped lay the foundations for one of the most comprehensive archives of interviews with decision makers on America’s longest war. She has covered political violence and armed conflicts around the world, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan where she covered the conflict there as bureau chief for the Washington Post and senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Kabul for five years.
An award-winning investigative journalist, Rondeaux started her reporting career by covering cops, courts, and crises as a staff reporter for the Post, St. Petersburg Times, New York Daily News, and New York Observer. A regular contributor to the Intercept, Daily Beast, and World Politics Review, she was part of the Pulitzer Prize–winning team at the Washington Post that covered the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. She started her career in book publishing in New York, handling translations and supporting global rights management for Franklin & Siegal Associates and HarperCollins. She holds a B.A. in Russian Area Studies from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A. in Journalism from New York University, and a M.P.P. in International Affairs from Princeton University.