Maeghin Alarid-Hughes holds an M.A. in International Security and Homeland Defense and a graduate certificate in Terrorism Analysis. She was the Project Coordinator for Project Arrowhead, a Department of Homeland Security-funded countering violent extremism project through Mississippi College. Through Project Arrowhead, Ms. Alarid-Hughes and the research team interviewed previously incarcerated terrorists in an effort to understand the radicalization process. She is the author of several publications on terrorism recruitment and radicalization and is a certified polygraph examiner. Her knowledge of lie-detection both terrifies and annoys her children.
Maeghin was an Anti-Terrorism specialist and a consultant for a physical security company out of Texas, Specialized Risk, LLC. She was the lead policy analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies onsite at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, working arms control, nonproliferation and strategic stability issues for the Air Force. She has fifteen years of experience working for the Department of Defense, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and every branch of the military. She was a terrorism instructor at the Defense Nuclear Weapons School where she created the school’s first course on Female Suicide Bombers. She was asked to present her research on Female Recruitment and Radicalization Online at the Women’s Peace and Security Conference in 2015.
Her research was published in the book, “Impunity: Countering Illicit Power in War and Transition” by the National Defense University. She is also a contributing author in the book “Online Terrorist Propaganda, Recruitment, and Radicalization”, by CRC Press. She also co-authored the book, “Origins of the World’s Most Formidable Terrorist Groups” published by Taylor and Francis in May, 2021.
Ms. Alarid-Hughes has worked in countering violent extremism and social media monitoring for the last eight years. She has worked with State, Federal and Military first responders as well as international students and has traveled to various military bases throughout the United States instructing on response to radiological terrorism.
Maeghin is an adjunct instructor at Arapahoe Community College and Aims Community College in Colorado where she teaches and created the course: Terrorism Threat and Risk Analysis. She is also an adjunct instructor at Columbia Southern University where she teaches courses in: Terrorism Response Operations, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Intelligence Processes, and Preparedness and Response Partners. She is also a certified polygraph examiner with the American Polygraph Association.