Gretchen (@gretchenspeters) investigates and reports on fraud, corruption, money-laundering, the intersection of crime and conflict, and illicit activity in cyberspace. She conducts complex investigative work on commercial fraud for private clients, and in 2022 was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business for her work to bring forward whistleblowers. She also chairs the Alliance to Counter Crime Online (ACCO), which is fighting for systemic change in the laws governing cyberspace. Gretchen serves on the advisory board of the Center on Economic and Financial Power and previously co-chaired an OECD Task Force on Wildlife and Environmental Crime.

Gretchen is the author of Seeds of Terror, a ground-breaking book that traced the role the opium trade has played in three decades of conflict in Afghanistan. She spent five years researching the book, which Barrons called “a well-written, well-documented and exemplary work of journalism.” Gretchen later authored a paper about the Haqqani network with West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, along with chapters in leading academic books about how crime syndicates impacted peace-building efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s D-Company, the Pakistani Taliban and the intersection of crime and conflict.

She has consulted U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counter Narcotics and Global Threats in understanding and countering the convergence of conflict and organized crime, and how transnational criminals hide their activities.

Gretchen has testified before the U.S. Congress and is a frequent commentator on television and radio including CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR, Fox, Reuters, and New York Times. She has delivered presentations on her work for the Pentagon, the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Special Operations Command, the Navy Seals, more than a dozen think tanks and universities, and for thousands of U.S. servicemen and women deploying to Afghanistan. Gretchen holds a Masters’ Degree in International Relations from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, where she was awarded the Sié Chéou-Kang security and diplomacy fellowship and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers Life’s Choices Foundation Scholarship to study transnational organized crime.

In a past life, Gretchen worked as a foreign correspondent, covering Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than a decade, first for The Associated Press and later for ABC News. She has also reported from Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Egypt and Kosovo. Gretchen has published editorials in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Foreign Policy, among other places. She speaks English and Spanish.