Director Christopher Wray has named Susan Ferensic as the assistant director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD) at FBI Headquarters. Ms. Ferensic most recently served as the special agent in charge of the Columbia Field Office in South Carolina.

The WMDD leads the FBI’s efforts to mitigate threats from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive weapons.

Ms. Ferensic joined the FBI in 1997 as a computer forensic examiner in the Laboratory Division and was selected for new agent training in 2000. As a new agent, she was assigned to investigate criminal and national security computer intrusion matters in the Washington Field Office.

In 2007, Ms. Ferensic was promoted to supervisory special agent in the Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters, where she was a program manager for criminal computer intrusion investigations. She transferred to the Albuquerque Field Office in New Mexico in 2009 to lead the cyber and technically trained agent squad, which included oversight of WMD coordinators and bomb technicians. She also served and supervised Albuquerque’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Ms. Ferensic was promoted in 2014 to special assistant to the executive assistant director of the Science and Technology Branch at FBI Headquarters, providing advice on broad program management and administrative matters. In 2016, she was promoted to assistant special agent in charge of the Criminal Branch of the Sacramento Field Office in California.

In 2018, Ms. Ferensic became section chief of the Digital Forensics and Analytics Section in the Operational Technology Division at FBI Headquarters. The next year, she was promoted to chief of staff of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch at FBI Headquarters. She was named special agent in charge of the Columbia Field Office in 2020.

Ms. Ferensic earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Maryland. Prior to working at the FBI, she was a computer scientist at the Department of Defense.