Casey Woods

Casey Woods is the Founder and Executive Director of FORGE and leads the Overwatch Project, the only comprehensive peer-intervention training and engagement initiative focused on firearms suicide prevention specifically tailored to the military and veteran community. This program empowers service members and veterans to intervene with friends and loved ones to prevent suicide through protective firearm storage measures – an evidence-based approach modeled after the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk" campaign.  The Overwatch Project has trained more than 25,000 service members and veterans in the past 12 months, through partnerships with Active Duty military, National Guards, and other community partners. The Overwatch Project was selected as a third place winner in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs #MissionDaybreak Innovation Challenge, which received more than 1,300 submissions from entities that included health tech companies, Veteran Service Organizations, community-based organizations, startups and universities.  Casey is a George W. Bush Institute Veteran Leadership Scholar and an Ashoka Fellow. She is a graduate of Duke University (BA) and Columbia University (MS, Journalism). Prior to founding  the Overwatch Project / FORGE, she was an award-winning journalist with extensive experience covering crime, local government and international affairs.