Chairman of the Board

Nick Dowling is the Chairman of the Board of IDS International, which he founded in 2006 to provide military and civilian customers with innovative solutions to complex and multidimensional national security challenges. Since that time, IDS has grown rapidly and emerged as a high-quality provider of training, data research, and engineering services to the US government and international partners.

Under Dowling’s leadership, IDS has grown rapidly and today comprises a talented team of several hundred defense, development, and diplomacy experts. IDS offers a variety of innovative solutions and capabilities, including training, expeditionary services, data research, and cyber and information warfare. The company is the developer and exclusive provider of SMEIR™, a cyber and information warfare training system. Since its creation, SMEIR has been used at the Joint Readiness Training Center, National Training Center, Muscatatuck Cyber Training Center, Cyber Blitz, and at a variety of civilian locations hosting special forces training.

For nearly three decades, Dowling’s career has focused on the challenge of conflict and instability.  In his government service, Dowling worked to end the Balkan wars, serving as Director for European affairs at the National Security Council where he helped coordinate Bosnia and Kosovo policy. Dowling also served as a defense fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as a senior fellow at the National Defense University, and as a policy advisor for two presidential campaigns and one US Senate campaign. His private sector work has focused on land force training, capacity building, open source intelligence, cyber and information warfare, Monitoring and Evaluation, interagency coordination, and US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dowling has a B.A. in government from Harvard College and an M.A. in National Security Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.