Dr. Selma Gomez Orr is a Wargaming Fellow at the National Defense University’s National Defense Wargaming Center (NDU-NDWC). Prior to joining NDWC in September of 2022, she worked in a variety of positions in both the public and private sectors, in addition to academia. Within government, she served as a White House Fellow in the Office of the Under Secretary for Management at the U.S. Department of State and went on to serve as a Foreign Affairs Officer.
As a management consultant, Dr. Orr specialized in operations consulting for large service firms, both as an independent consultant and as a Senior Manager at KPMG. She has also taught quantitative methods in undergraduate and graduate school programs, notably at The American University of Rome and at ISEG Business School in Paris, France. Her teaching, for which she received top reviews, focused on case-based experiential learning. Most recently, Dr. Orr applied her quantitative skills in the development of data analytics at a cybersecurity start-up firm and was named a U.S. CyberCorps Scholar.
Dr. Orr received her doctorate in Decision Sciences from Harvard University. She earned her Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics at Harvard College and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.
She is married to David W. Orr, a retired Foreign Service Officer and Special Agent with the U.S. Department of State, and a proud parent to two children, Camila and William.