Amy Zegart

Co-Director, Center for International Security and Cooperation

Amy Zegart is Co‑director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She also co-directs the Stanford Cyber Policy Program and is a contributing editor to the Atlantic. An award-winning author, Zegart has written four books about U.S. foreign policy, intelligence challenges, and political risk. Her most recent book, co-authored with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (Twelve Books, May 2018). Based on a Stanford MBA course they have taught since 2012, Political Risk investigates the changing political risk landscape and how business leaders can navigate it more effectively. Zegart’s 2007 book, Spying Blind, which examined organizational weaknesses in the CIA and FBI before 9/11, won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award. Her current research examines offensive cyber operations and the future of drone coercion.

Featured by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform, she served on the Clinton administration’s National Security Council staff and as a foreign policy adviser to the Bush‑Cheney 2000 presidential campaign. She has testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, provided training to the U.S. Marine Corps, and advised officials on intelligence, homeland security, and cyber security matters. Her commentary has been featured on national television networks, NPR, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. Before her academic career, Zegart spent three years as a McKinsey & Company management consultant advising leading companies on strategy and organizational effectiveness. She came to Stanford from UCLA, where she was Professor of Public Policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs.  Zegart’s public service includes serving on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Task Force on Nuclear Nonproliferation, the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association National Advisory Board, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Counter‑Terrorism and Community Police Advisory Board, and the National Academies of Science Panel to Improve Intelligence Analysis. She received an A.B. in East Asian studies magna cum laude from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. She serves on the board of directors of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (KTOS).  She is a native of Louisville, Kentucky.


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