Jock Covey teaches conflict transformation with particular emphasis on the skills needed to develop strategies and plans as well as to motivate the full range of actors needed for implementation. The spirit and content of these courses reflect the full range of Jock's hands-on experience with diplomacy, business, and the military, across a wide variety of complex conflicts and settings. He co-authored Quest for Viable Peace, a peacekeeping handbook currently in use at a number of universities and military staff schools.

Until 2010, Jock led external affairs, corporate security, and sustainability services for Bechtel, closely supporting crisis management activities in Iraq and elsewhere.

Before joining Bechtel in 2001, he served as Principal Deputy at the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) 1999 to 2001 and as Deputy High Representative in Sarajevo from the creation of the Office of the High Representative in 1995.

He served twice as Special Assistant to the President at the National Security Council -- for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs in the Reagan Administration and later for implementation of the Dayton Peace accords in the Clinton Administration.

Earlier, he was Special Assistant to Henry Kissinger, and also served in Berlin, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Pretoria, participated in the Beirut ceasefire negotiations after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and negotiated military portions of the Israel-Egypt-US Treaty implementing the Camp David Accords. and served as Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the US National Defense University.