Ross Cohen

​Deputy Secretary
Maryland Department of Veterans & Military Families

Ross Cohen is a U.S. Army veteran and currently serves as the Deputy Secretary with the Maryland Department of Veterans & Military Families. He previously served as the Chief External Affairs Officer with Blue Star Families, a leading military family non-profit.

His earlier experience in the veteran- and military-family empowerment space includes Executive Director roles with two of the nation’s largest military-community employment efforts; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes and JPMorgan Chase’s Veteran Jobs Mission coalition. He has worked on Presidential, Gubernatorial, and Congressional campaigns, as well as on county and statewide referenda in Washington State.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Brown University, his first jobs were in journalism, working as an editorial assistant at The International Herald Tribune and as the English-language editor at the UB Post in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Following 9/11, he enlisted into the Army as an infantry paratrooper, serving one 2003-04 deployment to the Afghan-Pakistani border.

He has been designated a Point of Light by the Points of Light Institute, and has published several op-eds in The Seattle Times and Crosscut, both Washington-State publications, as well as multiple short stories in Warhorse and Operation Homecoming, an anthology. He is a native of Rockville, MD and lives in Riva, MD, with his wife and daughter.
​