Dr. Krista London Couture is a seasoned expert, educator, and practitioner dedicated to preventing hate-motivated and targeted violence by bridging research, policy, and practice to strengthen community resilience. For two decades, she has advanced national and global efforts in counterterrorism and counter-radicalization, working across government, academia, and the private sector to address one of society’s most wickedly complex and pressing issues.
Her career includes service at the National Counterterrorism Center/Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other U.S. federal Government agencies; leadership at Hedayah’s Centre for Excellence for Preventing Violent Extremism, a premier global “think/do” tank focused on capacity building and reintegration; and extensive engagement with U.S. educational institutions, both domestically and abroad.
Building on this foundation, Dr. London Couture has led whole-of-community programs and multi-disciplinary teams focused on preventing and responding to hate-motivated incidents, including radicalization. Leveraging the public health sector model in radicalization prevention, she partners with key prevention stakeholders, including educators, law enforcement, policymakers, mental health professionals, and families to confront hate, reduce polarization, and foster unity and social cohesion through targeted and locally-relevant resilience-building approaches.
As an educator, Dr. London Couture serves as a faculty associate, where she designs and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in criminal justice. As a scholarly-practitioner, she also advises K-12 schools on developing comprehensive prevention and resilience strategies—creating tailored action plans, conducting risk assessments, and leading professional development initiatives that empower educators to identify and intervene early when warning signs emerge. She also developed and delivers a four-week, virtual professional development course for educators to build awareness and confidence as safeguarding agents to address hate-motivated incidents and behaviors in schools and classrooms.
Dr. London Couture earned her Doctorate in Education from Arizona State University, where her dissertation explored how U.S. educators confront hate-motivated incidents and targeted violence through culturally responsive, mindfulness-based approaches. She also completed a federal executive fellowship at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., researching and publishing on gendered approaches in countering violent extremism. Her master’s degree in criminal justice is from Boston University and her bachelor’s in international affairs is from Lewis & Clark College.
A frequent speaker and lecturer, Dr. London Couture engages audiences of educators and practitioners on preventing hate and extremism in educational settings.
While Dr. London Couture calls the great state of Kentucky home now, she has lived and worked both domestically and abroad. Overseas, she has lived and/or worked in Africa (Morocco, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tunisia, and Cameroon), Europe (France & The Netherlands), the Middle East (United Arab Emirates & Jordan), and Asia (Thailand, Bangladesh, and China) for more than 20 years.
Her work is guided by meliorism—the belief that individuals can advance positive change through compassion, creativity, and courage—which informs her evidence-based, human-centered approach to building resilience and strengthening communities.