BIO
Major Lauren Serrano is a Middle Eastern Foreign Area Officer in the US Marine Corps. She deployed to Iraq from August 2013 - July 2014 where she worked for the Office of Security Assistance - Iraq. She is also an elected member of the Board of Governors for the Foreign Area Officer Association and currently serves as the Secretary. The below article was derived from her original Master’s thesis that studied the efficacy of security assistance as a tool in the U.S. National Security Strategy and won the National Intelligence University’s annual award for best masters thesis on the operations-intelligence relationship.