John Kirbow is a an Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran who worked as a cultural expert and member of the US Army Special Operations community, having served in Nigeria, Baghdad, Basra, Europe, and US Central Command (CENTCOM), Tampa. His current passion is applied social science. A devout linguist, John speaks – to varying degrees - Arabic, Farsi, German, and Spanish as well as decent Russian, and some Pashto, Urdu / Hindi, some Serbian / Croatian, and lapsed Swahili (hopefully to be revived soon). He also served in his civilian life as a high-level cultural and language specialist in Afghanistan as a DoD GS-13 with a Brigade Combat Team, which included working with tribal leaders and helping discuss and negotiate face-to-face with high-profile Taliban. He conducted a personal venture to the Andes community of Cusco, Peru, doing sustainable development and immersion-based sociocultural research with the indigenous Quechua population, learning baseline conversational Quechua. As a member of the Special Operations community, some of his main specialties were communications, language, social and cultural terrain mapping, and understanding the ‘information environment’.

Salzburg, austria


After being honorably discharged in 2008, he decided to put his knowledge and experience into new endeavors to help converge on the best tools of applied social science, analytics, and community-driven development toward marginalized US communities and other places abroad. He’s been heavily involved with a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY since Sandy in 2012, working across the community for resident-led social innovation.

Aside from several full-length books still in the edit stages, he is publishing several white papers and promotional pamphlets to convey a variety of ideas and approaches, to everything from empowering veterans and American communities to assisting soldiers in Afghanistan and other conflict zones better understand and work within the cultural framework they fight in.

northern Afghanistan

He is also partnering with an array of people and groups alongside a diversity of skill, experience and background, to contribute the tools of behavioral science and community mapping to the domain of social innovation, not only to help tackle some of our most pressing social problems at home and abroad, but – eventually - to expand on models of sustainable business in which everyone benefits, from the local village economy to the multinational.

cusco, peru (no, its Not a City slickers remake!)

Note from John, on his related blogs
Blogs:
Science in our Communities: http://scienceinourcommunities.blogspot.com/ 
(The Moral Arc and a revival of rationality and scientific thinking* within American communities, as a community-led discussion, amplified by social media campaigns)

My other blog on this topic, ’Social Science Warrior’ http://socialsciencewarrior.blogspot.com/ 
(I'm using the term 'social science warrior' as an indirect nod / joking reference to my applied science work for the Army and later for Pentagon, via Iraq and Afghanistan ... but it is mainly used here to counter the ideological / dogmatic approach of so-called 'social justice warriors', with a less hostile and more inclusive, non-partisan, evidenced and reasoned approach to 'social justice')