Senior Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Linda Robinson is a distinguished author, analyst, and prize-winning former foreign correspondent with forty years of experience in international affairs and national security. Her research and journalism have taken her around the world, and she frequently lectures at international conferences.
Robinson was a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation from 2013 to 2022, where she also directed the Center for Middle East Public Policy from 2020 to 2022. In addition to co-authoring over twenty RAND publications, her wide-ranging research there received five awards. Her trade books One Hundred Victories (2013), Tell Me How This Ends (2008), and Masters of Chaos (2004) were critically acclaimed, best-selling works of reportage published by Public Affairs. She was a foreign correspondent and senior writer for U.S. News and World Report, senior editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and provided commentary on PBS’s Washington Week in Review and other programs.
Robinson was previously a fellow at CFR, the Wilson Center, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
In government service, Robinson served as chair of the Army War College Board of Visitors, for which she received the Outstanding Civilian Service Award. She was most recently senior advisor at the U.S. State Department for the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability.