Chris Voss

Christopher Voss began his career in federal law enforcement and joined the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force in the 1980s, where he participated in investigations including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other high-profile terrorism cases. He received formal hostage negotiation training at the FBI Academy in 1992 and thereafter spent 24 years in the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit, developing expertise in high-stakes interpersonal negotiation techniques. From 2003 to 2007, Voss served as the FBI’s chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator and worked on more than 150 international hostage cases, including prominent assignments such as the Jill Carroll kidnapping in Iraq and the Steve Centanni case in the Gaza Strip. During his FBI tenure, he also served as the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative to the National Security Council’s hostage working group and earned awards including the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Exemplary Service. After leaving the FBI in 2007, Voss founded The Black Swan Group, a consultancy and training company that applies techniques from crisis negotiation to business negotiation, sales, and leadership contexts. He leveraged his operational experience to teach and train corporate teams and has delivered keynote talks and workshops globally for business audiences and governments. Voss transitioned into authorship and academia, co-writing Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It (2016) with Tahl Raz, a book that has sold extensively and been translated into many languages, and he has served as an adjunct professor and lecturer at institutions including Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, the USC Marshall School of Business, and Harvard Law School in negotiation and related courses.