Jeannette Gaudry Haynie, PhD, is a security and conflict scholar, retired Marine Corps officer and combat veteran, and former government senior executive leader. A New Orleans native and U.S. Naval Academy graduate, she is a Cobra attack helicopter pilot by trade who has served both within and outside the government in a wide range of leadership roles. Within the government, she has served on active duty, as a reservist, and in a civilian executive leadership role at the Department of Defense; outside of government, she has served as a principal research scientist, nonprofit executive, and adjunct professor.

Dr. Haynie served on active duty as a Cobra pilot and instructor before transitioning into the reserves and beginning graduate school. While serving on the Joint Staff and in the Marine Corps Commandant’s think tank, she earned her MA in Political Science from the University of New Orleans and her PhD in International Relations from The George Washington University. She retired after 22 years of combined active and reserve service in the Marine corps. While serving in uniform, she advised senior leadership on critical and creative thinking for warfighting effectiveness and served as a subject matter expert on talent management and the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. In these roles, she led the development of frameworks for talent management and learning for warfighting effectiveness and worked to increase the integration of women across the military and remove barriers to service for underrepresented personnel. She conducted independent and original research for the Commandant and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Dr. Haynie subsequently returned to government to serve as a senior executive at the Department of Defense, where she led a task force charged with connecting people and culture work to the Department’s mission of providing the military forces to deter war and ensure the nation’s security.

As a scholar, her research broadly focuses on the human face of war and security around the world, particularly the intersections of people, culture, leadership, and conflict. She specializes in the U.S. military, and her operational experiences and academic work are deeply connected. Dr. Haynie has conducted research on behalf of the U.S. military and federal government at both the RAND Corporation and CNA; she is currently a principal research scientist at CNA and a non-resident adjunct fellow at the Center for New American Security. As an adjunct professor, she has taught courses in Gender and Conflict and International Relations at The George Washington University and Quantitative Methods of Disaster Resilience at Tulane University. She also served as Senior Fellow and later codirector of nonprofit Women In International Security, where she conducted research into the gender dimensions of various security phenomena, including terrorism and extremism.

Dr. Haynie is a member of the Presidential Leadership Scholars’ Class of 2019. With a group of fellow U.S. Naval Academy graduates, she founded the Sisterhood of Mother B, part of the Naval Academy Alumni Association’s Women’s Shared Interest Group, where she cohosts a podcast – “Waypoints” – that seeks to transform how we think of leaders and leadership in the military. She and her husband, a fellow Marine Corps officer, have three children and reside in Alexandria, Virginia.