“The faculty and staff at IWP have been pivotal in my professional and academic journey, and I truly appreciated the wealth of knowledge and experience that they brought to the classroom.”
– Caleb Sloan (’21)
A Marine Corps veteran, Caleb’s intelligence career took off when IWP Career Services helped him land a private sector job and later a position with the Department of Homeland Security. After graduating IWP, Caleb served his home state in the New York State Office of Counterterrorism and founded an organization that merged journalism with intelligence collection and analysis.
He has recently embarked on his next big project: a platform to give missionaries and the Christian community the intelligence resources they need to stay safe in high-risk areas.
Caleb recently shared with us how IWP impacted his career and his sense of purpose.
Caleb serving in the US Marine CorpsFrom the Marine Corps to Intelligence Studies
Caleb joined the U.S. Marine Corps right after high school, when he was 17. As a radio operator, he traveled the Pacific region, including Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, before returning to the U.S.
When his service concluded, he studied political science at Siena College in New York. The country was in the midst of the 2016 elections, and Caleb wanted to try out politics. He worked in the New York State Legislature, where he quickly learned that this was not his favorite field.
He pivoted to a focus on national security and intelligence and took a Russian language course, with a new goal of entering the Intelligence Community or law enforcement.
He discovered IWP when researching intelligence-specific master’s degree programs. The IWP admissions office connected him with another former Marine who spoke with Caleb about his own career trajectory.
“I remember vividly the first day I visited IWP,” said Caleb. “I walked down to the library and remember seeing numerous students reading about complex things that I had never experienced in my life. They were reading economic theory applied to counterterrorism operations, or a critique of Marxist theory as it applies to geopolitics. I decided this was exactly where I wanted to be.”
Caleb and his wife soon moved to D.C. so he could attend IWP.
Caleb SloanBreaking into the Intelligence Field
“Coming into IWP, I had no background in intelligence,” Caleb said. “I got a cyber threat intelligence analyst job after one semester.” Caleb landed this job thanks to the support of IWP career director Derrick Dortch.
“It was a great experience seeing how intelligence worked in the private sector while going to school full time,” he said.
After a year or so, Caleb attended a virtual Intelligence Community career fair that he learned about through IWP Career Services. He discussed the hiring process with several agencies and ultimately was offered an Intelligence Operations Specialist position at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis in its Current and Emerging Threat Center (CETC).
Caleb was excited to be back in public service. “I am a very mission-oriented person,” he said. The idea of serving his country again appealed to him. He was also looking forward to getting a security clearance.
Caleb at the U.S. CapitolIntelligence by Day and Night
Caleb’s job at DHS was particularly interesting because he was there at the onset of Covid, a volatile time for the nation. Caleb and his team looked at domestic terrorism, the resurgence of ISIS in Europe, and the January 6th incident. He was tasked with collecting information on counterterrorism, transnational organized crime, counterintelligence, and critical infrastructure. He worked with Intelligence Community professionals, federal law enforcement, fusion centers, and state and local law enforcement.
“The flexibility of IWP with night classes worked out great,” said Caleb. “Being able to have classes with lifelong practitioners and experts at night, and then go in the next morning and directly apply what I was learning in my job was an incredible experience.”
In his M.A. program, Caleb especially enjoyed learning about the intelligence cycle, report writing, how different agencies interact with each other, relevant historical background, and the arts of statecraft outside of traditional force, like covert action.
“I loved that the professors often shared anecdotes and specific information from the field,” said Caleb. “Meanwhile, the students were eager to have open discussions. They never got offended, and they never put their emotion over their ability to have difficult discussions.”
Caleb at IWPCounterterrorism in New York
Upon completing his IWP M.A. in Strategic Intelligence Studies, Caleb and his wife were eager to move closer to family. Caleb secured an analyst position on the Red Team with the New York State Office of Counter Terrorism.
There, Caleb worked on “See Something, Say Something” campaigns around the state. He managed and coordinated undercover law enforcement exercises and red team sessions with state and local police and fusion centers. He also did critical infrastructure penetration testing.
Intelligence-Related Entrepreneurship
When his daughter was born in 2022, Caleb knew it was time to stop traveling around the state. He started his own business, Overt Operator – a daily intelligence briefing newsletter which grew into an extensive open-source intelligence (OSINT) community and larger media organization. Last year, Overt Operator was acquired by a venture capital firm.
Caleb then had time to reflect on how he wanted to invest his time and expertise. In December 2024, he founded ROAM Intelligence, an information sharing network and community that aims to give missionaries, pastors, and faith-based organizations the same intelligence tools that protect nations and businesses.
“In many areas around the world, Christians are targeted,” said Caleb. “As they serve in high-risk areas, I wanted to provide them with the same enterprise level products and monitoring services that I have seen on the government side.”
Caleb knows that Christian organizations often do not have the budget to pay for a consulting service, so he plans to keep the platform cost accessible to everyone. ROAM will focus on intelligence related to Christian persecution and will also incorporate broader threat alerts (e.g. shootings, weather conditions). ROAM will draw from both traditional OSINT threat reporting with HUMINT sources on the ground.
While Caleb felt a true calling to found ROAM, his intellectual formation at IWP also contributed. “Beyond understanding intelligence, the thing that really spoke to me from IWP was Prof. Wood’s course on Western Moral Tradition,” said Caleb. “We explored moral philosophy in the Bible, Greek philosophy, Roman legalism, and in the writings of great thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas. This moral philosophy was presented as something that can ground you in professional settings. I appreciate having that foundation to fall back on.”
Caleb is also glad that he is able to continue to serve. He said, “I’m excited to have been able to have had an impact for stakeholders in the private sector and national security, and I’m proud of helping my state through my work in counterterrorism. But the best is yet to come. I’m really excited about the spiritual and eternal impact that I’m hoping ROAM can bring to people.”
Please note: These are Caleb’s personal views and do not constitute endorsement by the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. Marine Corps. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) or Military-themed visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.