{"id":4580,"date":"2023-12-01T17:27:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T22:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=4580"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:09","slug":"on-the-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2023\/12\/on-the-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"
As assistant director of the FBI\u2019s Directorate of Intelligence, Tonya Ugoretz, M.A. \u201901, is vigilant about security in the U.S.<\/div><\/div>\n

By Christopher Hann<\/p>\n

Tonya Ugoretz, M.A. \u201901 was just 18 months into her career at the Federal Bureau of Investigation \u2014 18 months removed from graduating with the first full class at Seton Hall\u2019s School of Diplomacy and International Relations \u2014 when in 2003 she was chosen to serve as the daily intelligence briefer for FBI Director Robert Mueller.<\/p>\n

With the nation at war in the Middle East, the gravity of the assignment could not be overstated: Ugoretz would meet with the director before 7 a.m. each day to update him on the panoply of threats \u2014 terroristic, technological and otherwise \u2014 posed to the United States from across the nation and around the world. The director would take that information to his daily morning briefing with the president.<\/p>\n

The FBI is a famously agent-driven agency, yet Ugoretz was an intelligence analyst at the bureau, not an agent. (\u201cI don\u2019t carry a gun,\u201d she assures.) So it\u2019s worth noting she was the first non-agent to be chosen as the director\u2019s daily briefer. And it\u2019s fair to say she felt some pressure. \u201cIf you screw this up,\u201d she remembers thinking to herself, \u201cyou\u2019ll also be the last analyst to serve as the director\u2019s briefer.\u201d<\/p>\n

She needn\u2019t have worried. In a decorated FBI career now in its 23rd year, Ugoretz has served in one high-pressure position after another, some in collaboration with other federal agencies, including a tour of duty in the CIA\u2019s Counterterrorism Center.<\/p>\n

Today she\u2019s the assistant director of the FBI\u2019s Directorate of Intelligence. \u201cMy work has been focused on analyzing intelligence that helps us identify threats, both domestic and international,\u201d Ugoretz says. \u201cAll of our adversaries are trying to leverage the latest technology in order to achieve their directives. Our goal is to stay a step ahead of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon graduating from Seton Hall, Ugoretz was selected as a presidential management fellow in a prestigious program that prepares advanced degree holders across academic disciplines for leadership careers in the federal government. She figured she might be destined for the State Department.<\/p>\n

But the FBI came calling. Ugoretz was offered a position as an intelligence research specialist in the bureau\u2019s Investigative Services Division. She knew little about the FBI other than what she\u2019d seen in the movies but thought the two-year assignment would at least be a foot in the door.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And then, on September 11, 2001, while Ugoretz was awaiting the completion of her FBI background check, 19 members of Al Qaeda hijacked four American jetliners, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and another into a field in rural Pennsylvania. \u201cImmediately,\u201d Ugoretz says, \u201cwhat I was going to be doing with the FBI had a lot more relevance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ugoretz made an immediate impact. A year after starting at the bureau, she moved to the Counterterrorism Division as an intelligence analyst.<\/p>\n

A year later, she became the director\u2019s daily briefer. She would start work each day around midnight, poring over stacks of reports gathered by the agency\u2019s 56 field offices across the United States and elsewhere across the globe.<\/p>\n

She had no more than 15 minutes with the director each morning, so she knew her presentation had to be both precise and concise. The director\u2019s conference room contained a single long table, with a door at one end. Ugoretz had to walk the length of the table to reach her seat. Many were the mornings when Mueller would ask Ugoretz, \u201cWhat have you got?\u201d before she even sat down.<\/p>\n

It was in preparing for these daily briefings \u2014 as fleeting as they were critical to the nation\u2019s security \u2014 that Ugoretz would recall the advice she had once received from Courtney Smith, today the dean of Seton Hall\u2019s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Smith had been one of her professors during her first semester of graduate school, and she remembered him imploring students, in their writings, to get to the heart of the matter with all due haste. \u201cYour papers are not a murder mystery,\u201d she recalled Smith counseling. \u201cDon\u2019t wait until the end to tell me your point.\u201d In preparing her morning briefings for Mueller, Ugoretz applied that lesson on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Ugoretz joined the FBI\u2019s Directorate of Intelligence in 2008 as a unit chief, overseeing the FBI\u2019s contributions to the U.S. intelligence-gathering apparatus as well as the daily intelligence briefings for the FBI director and the attorney general. Two years later she was promoted to section chief of the directorate \u2014 the FBI\u2019s chief intelligence officer. She ascended to her current position in 2022.<\/p>\n

Over the course of her career, Ugoretz has compiled extensive experience working with other federal agencies. For six years starting in 2012, she served as a special adviser with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a senior adviser at the National Intelligence Council, and the first director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. Her work did not go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, awarded Ugoretz with the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Three years later she received the Presidential Rank Award, which recognizes sustained exceptional performance by senior executives within the federal government. Ugoretz says the award is bestowed on just 1 percent of the federal government\u2019s senior executive service employees. \u201cThat\u2019s a very meaningful one for me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking back on the evolution of her career and the ever-shifting menu of national security challenges, Ugoretz says the \u201cthreat landscape\u201d has only grown more complex. \u201cWhen I started,\u201d she says, \u201cwe were focused on counterterrorism. Now there\u2019s really a whole range of threats. There\u2019s the continued terrorism threat, which is still the FBI\u2019s No. 1 priority. But there\u2019s also counterintelligence \u2014 protecting against influence, espionage, protecting government secrets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to focus on weapons of mass destruction, the growing cyber threat, with more adversaries, whether criminals or countries, and then the criminal threat \u2014 public corruption, financial fraud, things like transnational criminal organizations. The range of threats that the FBI is the lead agency for not only investigating but preventing is extremely broad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ugoretz draws a straight line between her experience as a master\u2019s student in Seton Hall\u2019s new School of Diplomacy and International Relations and her work at the FBI. She had earned bachelor\u2019s degrees in Spanish and international relations at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania and afterward served in editorial positions for foreign-policy journals, including one covering the Middle East. And though she had long held an interest in global affairs and always wanted to work in the federal government, she felt she needed additional training.<\/p>\n

She embraced Seton Hall\u2019s new master\u2019s program with brio, serving as the founding editor-in-chief of the student-run Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. Her inaugural issue contained a heady compilation of bylines, among them Robert Torricelli, then a U.S. senator from New Jersey; Robert Picciotto, the director-general of operations evaluation at the World Bank; and Crown Princess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg. \u201cIt\u2019s no exaggeration to say my time at Seton Hall really changed my life,\u201d Ugoretz says, \u201cand set me on my path that got me where I am today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith, the dean of the school, says Ugoretz\u2019s tenure as the Journal\u2019s editor set a tone for the entire program. \u201cShe had the right skill set, mindset and maturity,\u201d he says. \u201cThe fact that Tonya did it and did it effectively gave us the faith to give other students the chance to excel. That set the template that we could use time and time again in our development.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the classroom, Smith says, Ugoretz\u2019s engagement in the curriculum also served as something of a blueprint. \u201cI remember her being really insightful,\u201d he says, \u201cnot just doing the bare minimum of what you would expect, but really wrestling with the material at a deeper level, being analytical in her thought process, and contributing to class discussions in a way that helped model that behavior for other students.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, as the School of Diplomacy prepared for its annual commencement, the faculty decided to ask a graduate of the school to deliver the commencement address. Smith and his fellows chose Ugoretz.<\/p>\n

At one point in her speech inside Jubilee Auditorium, Ugoretz addressed the graduates directly, referencing the social-media hashtag by which the students will forever be known: Diploforlife. \u201cYou should know that when I meet a fellow Diplo,\u201d Ugoretz said, \u201cthere are a few things I know about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her fellow Diplos, she said, have a desire to solve problems, are persistent, have strong interpersonal skills, and an insatiable curiosity about the world. And inevitably, she said, that curiosity will enable the Diploforlife to find common ground with others, essential to building effective coalitions at work and in life.<\/p>\n

Ugoretz invoked the advice she had received 15 years earlier from Professor Margarita Balmaceda, a faculty member at the School of Diplomacy since its founding in 1999. It was the spring before graduation, and Ugoretz was grinding through the hiring process at several government agencies, when Balmaceda told her: \u201cAlways be doing something that\u2019s charging your batteries more than it drains them.\u201d It\u2019s a simple piece of advice, Ugoretz said, but its application is practically universal.<\/p>\n

And with that, Ugoretz offered a final bit of advice of her own. \u201cWhatever you do in life, seek solutions and common ground,\u201d she told the graduates. \u201cBe persistent, stay curious, build relationships, find what you share in common with others, rather than what divides you, and keep moving toward what energizes you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Christopher Hann Tonya Ugoretz, M.A. \u201901 was just 18 months into her career at the Federal Bureau of Investigation \u2014 18 months removed from graduating with the first full class at Seton Hall\u2019s School of Diplomacy and International Relations \u2014 when in 2003 she was chosen to serve as the daily intelligence briefer for…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingOn the Watch<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5632,"featured_media":4634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,259,317],"tags":[306],"class_list":["post-4580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-articles-2020-2024","category-profile","tag-government","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5632"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4580"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4635,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions\/4635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}