Kiron K. Skinner is the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.  She is a member of three Hoover Institution projects:  the Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy; the working group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict; and the Arctic Security Initiative. At Carnegie Mellon University, she is the founding director of the Center for International Relations and Politics; founding director of the Institute for Strategic Analysis; university adviser on national security policy; associate professor of political science in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences; associate professor by courtesy in the Institute for Software Research, a department of the School of Computer Science; and a distinguished fellow in Cylab, a major cyber-security research center within the College of Engineering. Her areas of expertise are international relations, international security, US foreign policy, and political strategy.

Skinner’s coauthored books, Reagan, in His Own Hand and Reagan, a Life in Letters, were New York Times best sellers. Reagan, in His Own Hand won Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Book Award; Reagan, a Life in Letters was named one of the best books of 2003 by the Los Angeles Times. The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin, coauthored with Serhiy Kudelia, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Condoleezza Rice, was excerpted on the opinion page of the New York Times.  Skinner is a contributing writer to Forbes.com.

Skinner’s government service includes membership in the US Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board as an adviser on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (2001–7); the Chief of Naval Operations’ Executive Panel (2004–present); the National Academies Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security (2009–11); and the National Security Education Board (2004–11). In 2010, Skinner was appointed to the advisory board of the George W. Bush Oral History Project. She was a foreign policy surrogate for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004, a senior foreign policy adviser to Speaker Newt Gingrich during his presidential campaign in 2011–12, and a foreign policy surrogate during the final stretch of Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. In 2012, Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett appointed Skinner to his Advisory Commission on African American Affairs.

Skinner is a lifetime director on the board of the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. 

Skinner holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from Harvard University and undergraduate degrees from Spelman College and Sacramento City College. She received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Molloy College, Long Island.