Year Ahead guest, Shawn Skelly, Co-founder of Out in National Security and Commissioner, National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, 2017-2020.

Shawn Skelly Ms. Shawn Skelly is the Co-Founder of Out in National Security and served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a Naval Flight Officer, retiring with the rank of Commander. After a period in industry with ITT Exelis, she joined the Obama Administration in 2013, as the first transgender veteran to be appointed by a President of the United States. She first served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics at the U.S. Department of Defense, and ultimately as the Director of the Office of the Executive Secretariat at the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2017, President Obama appointed Shawn to serve as a Commissioner on the newly established National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. Shawn was recognized as one of a group of transgender veterans in the 2017 OUT100.

Emerging Scholar Ali Wyne, a researcher at RAND, who presented at KCIS last summer, on Great Power Competition.

Ali Wyne is a Washington, DC-based policy analyst in the RAND Corporation’s Defense and Political Sciences Department. He serves as a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a non-resident fellow with the Modern War Institute.

An interview with Stephanie Hofmann from this past summer in Lisbon, where she discusses regional security organizations with Steve.

Stephanie C. Hofmann is Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. She received her PhD from Cornell University and her M.A.s from Cornell University and Bath University. She held visiting research positions at the European University Institute, the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Columbia University and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. As a visiting professor, she has taught academic and policy-oriented audiences in places such as Jerusalem, Rome, Tbilisi and Yerevan. And she conducted consultancy work for national governments and international organizations in places such as Burundi and Geneva. Her research centers on international/regional organizations, European and international security, networks, and global order. Her first book European Security in NATO’s Shadow. Party Ideologies and Institution Building appeared with Cambridge University Press (2013). Other research has appeared or is forthcoming in European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Peace Research and Perspectives on Politics.