Christine E Wormuth

Christine E. Wormuth served as Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) during the Obama-Biden Administration, the third most senior civilian position in the Department of Defense, advising two Secretaries of Defense on the full range of foreign policy and national security issues. She also served as the senior director for defense policy on the National Security Council, helping shape the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance that began rebalancing the military toward the Indo-Pacific. She joined the Obama-Biden Administration in 2009 as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Civil Support. Previously, Wormuth was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, worked in the private sector, and served for almost seven years as a civil servant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, beginning as a Presidential Management Fellow. Wormuth is currently Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. She teaches as an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s graduate program in security studies and serves on the honorary advisory board of the Leadership Committee for Women in National Security (LCWINS). In January 2021, she led the Biden-Harris Defense Agency Review Team and she has twice received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. After growing up in College Station, Texas, Wormuth graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts and has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland.