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Amy Beth Zegart

Lecturer, Political Economy
AmyBethZegart
Lecturer in Management
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Academic Area: 
Political Economy

Teaching Statement

Amy Zegart’s research focuses on organizational challenges and innovation in national security. She has studied the creation and evolution of the American national security state since 1947, adaptation failures in the CIA and FBI before 9/11, the roots of weak congressional intelligence oversight, and how business leaders manage global political risks.

Bio

Amy Zegart is the Co-Director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Political Economy at the Graduate School of Business (by courtesy). She co-teaches a GSB course on political risk management with Condoleezza Rice and a Political Science course on international security with Martha Crenshaw.

Zegart spent twelve years as a Public Policy professor at UCLA where she won two prestigious teaching awards. Before her academic careers, she spent three years at McKinsey & Company and served on the Clinton Administration’s National Security Council staff.

Her research examines organizational challenges and innovations in national security. She was profiled by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in U.S. intelligence reform. Her publications include Spying Blind, which won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award, and Flawed by Design, which won the American Political Science Association’s Leonard D. White Award.  From 2009 to 2011, she served on the National Academies of Science Panel to Improve Intelligence Analysis. Her commentary has been featured on national television and radio shows and in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

A former Fulbright scholar, Zegart received an AB in East Asian Studies from Harvard and an MA and PhD in Political Science from Stanford.

Courses Taught

Degree Courses

2013-14

In a globalized world, managers and investors are increasingly realizing that politics matter as much as economic fundamentals. Micro-level decisions made by local politicians in Brazil or India, national-level strategies of countries like China...

2011-12

The economies of the world are ever more closely linked. Record levels of international trade and investment are achieved every year. Cross-border mergers and acquisitions are booming. The foreign exchange markets handle trillions of dollars of...

Stanford Case Studies

IB102 | Engyn in Iraq: Choosing Between Baghdad and Erbil
Charles Nicas, Condoleezza Rice, Amy Zegart2012
IB103 | Political Risk in the Kaesong Industrial Complex
Torey McMurdo, Condoleezza Rice, Amy Zegart2012
IB101 | San Leon Energy, Hydraulic Fracturing in Poland
Astasia Myers, Condoleezza Rice, Amy Zegart2012