Ross Cohen

Ross Cohen, Deputy Secretary
Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs

Ross Cohen is a U.S. Army veteran and currently serves as the Deputy Secretary
with the Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs. 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.