Maureen McGough

As National Programs Director, Maureen oversees many of PF’s national training and technical assistance initiatives. Maureen joins the Police Foundation after nearly ten years with the US Department of Justice, most recently as a senior policy advisor in the Office of the Director at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). At NIJ, she launched the Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) Program, a national initiative to empower law enforcement to advance the police profession through science. She also led the agency’s Sentinel Events Initiative (SEI), an effort to learn from bad outcomes in criminal justice and support systems-level improvements to prevent their reoccurrence. She previously served as an international research specialist, overseeing the agency’s investments in human trafficking research, and as a senior policy advisor in the Bureau of Justice Assistance, focusing on preventing wrongful convictions and protecting individual rights under the Sixth Amendment.

Maureen also established numerous interagency partnerships, most recently with the DOJ’s International Criminal Investigative Training and Assistance Program (ICITAP) to support international program evaluation. She was instrumental in establishing a partnership with the State Department and the Kenya Wildlife Service to support counter-poaching efforts in East Africa. She advanced collaborative efforts with international partners including the Queensland Police Service, the New Zealand Ministry of Justice, the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network.

She previously served as counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, where she focused on interagency efforts to counter violent extremism and prevent radicalization to violence in the US. She also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and with the State Department as coordinator of AIDS relief efforts in Kigali, Rwanda.

Maureen is an attorney and earned her J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law, and her bachelor’s degree from the Catholic University of America.