International relations, US foreign policy, and political strategy expert Kiron Skinner is the Taube Family Chair of International Relations and Politics at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. She is the founding director of the Grand Strategy Program in the School of Public Policy and the founding director of the University’s Institute for Diplomacy, Security, and Innovation. She is also the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a senior advisor to the president of the Heritage Foundation.
Skinner previously served as the Taube Professor for International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, where she founded and directed several centers and institutes, including the Carnegie Mellon University Washington Semester Program. Skinner’s past government service includes membership on the US Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board as an adviser on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Defense Business Board, the Chief of Naval Operations’ Executive Panel, the National Academies Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security, the National Academies Committee on International Talent Programs in the Changing Global Environment, and the National Security Education Board. From 2012 to 2015 she served on Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs.
