Tom Sanderson is a consultant and the co-founder and former director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Sanderson is a course instructor for the U.S. Government and provides global risk assessments and advisory services for the private sector, media, and academia.

As director of and senior adviser to the CSIS Transnational Threats Project from 2002 to 2018, Sanderson investigated terrorism, insurgency, criminal networks, and geopolitics. He conducted field research in 70 countries, producing dozens of reports as well as opinion pieces and articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, CTC Sentinel, and the Harvard Asia-Pacific Review. Sanderson testifies before the U.S. Congress, provides expert commentary for the media and courts of law, and regularly engages a spectrum of sources, including business leaders, NGOs, clergy, journalists, terrorists, traffickers, refugees, law enforcement, and intelligence officials.

From 2013-2017, Sanderson led a multiphase study of terrorism in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Central Asia. Current activity examines foreign fighters, regional instability, and frontier market entry. Sanderson co-directed a SOCOM-funded effort on terrorism in several regions of the globe from 2010-2012 andbetween 2002 to 2009, he ran open source information networks on violent extremism in Europe and Southeast Asia. From 1998 to 2002, Sanderson worked for Science Applications International Corporation, examining weapons of mass destruction and terrorism for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Sanderson was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany (2005) and at Fudan University in Shanghai, China (2001). He holds a B.A. and Honorary Doctor of Laws from Wheaton College (Massachusetts) and an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University.