Besa Kabashi Ramaj, the founder and owner of B.K.R. & Associates, is an expert on security and cultural intelligence. She has served in several senior and executive roles for the government of Kosovo and its defense sector, as well as international private institutions and nonprofits. Ms. Kabashi-Ramaj has over 10 years’ experience, jointly in the areas of international security and affairs, national security, public policy, security sector and defense reform, management and international engagement.
As the founder and CEO of B.K.R. & Associates, she combines her team’s expertise in security and cultural intelligence to help institutions, organizations, and professionals successfully conduct work in culturally diverse environments. In addition to leading B.K.R. & Associates, she has been a consultant with the World Bank, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the UNDP, the Capacity Development Facilitation program and KFOS and on she partners with Capacity Building International, Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies and Globe Story in joint initiatives in the areas of security, emergency management, education and cultural intelligence.
Ms. Kabashi Ramaj has lived and worked in the US and Europe, with international and cross-cultural teams, in the areas of national security, security sector reform, defense, and human security.
She has served as the first Chief Executive Officer of the Deutcher Campus, an up and coming umbrella corporation, after a two year term as Chief Operational Manager of Heimerer College, a health sciences’ higher education institution. She has previously led the Centre for Research, Documentation, and Publication (CRDP), a think tank/NGO that focuses on transitional justice, dealing with the past and human security.
She is the former National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Kosovo, where she acted as the focal point for the security portfolio at the Office of the Prime Minister, under the guidance of the Prime Minister. During this time, she led the national working group on drafting the national security strategy, as well as the national working group on creating national air capabilities for emergency response. She was also the National Coordinator for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) and a member of the National Security Council.
Ms. Kabashi – Ramaj was also the Strategic Security Sector Review Coordinator for the Republic of Kosovo, the first nationally-owned broad security review in the country since Independence. She has worked as the Senior Security Policy and International Affairs advisor to the Minister for the Kosovo Security Force (MKSF) where she supported the institution in the areas of strategic planning & execution, strategic communication, institutional development & re-organization/security sector reform and procedure & process development.
Ms. Kabashi Ramaj earned her Master of Public and International Affairs / Security and Intelligence Studies from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA), University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at the Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, AR, USA.
She is a Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government Executive Program graduate, where she was trained in leadership, negotiation, communication, and speech. She is also a George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, College of International and Security Studies graduate, having finished the Program for Security, Stability, Transition, and Reconstruction. In addition, she has been a Marshall Center Scholar.
She has a research background on security, defense, and human security-related issues in the Republic of Kosovo and abroad and has published work on these topics.
Besa speaks six languages, including Albanian, English, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Italian and German. She was born in Kosovo, is married and has two sons. She paints and enjoys voluntary work that relates to arts and children.