Stephanie Sanok

Stephanie Sanok is a senior fellow at CSIS, working on acquisition reform, export controls, and a variety of international security projects. Prior to joining CSIS, she served at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, where she developed policy options for the U.S. government’s efforts to support a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq. While there, she collaborated closely with military and civilian colleagues to revise the Joint Campaign Plan—a unique interagency strategy to strengthen U.S. relations with Iraq along political, economic, energy, rule of law, and security lines of operation—and identify strategic risks and transition issues related to the U.S. military withdrawal. From 2005 to 2008, Ms. Sanok was a professional staff member on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services (HASC); from 2006 to 2007, she directed the HASC policy team, which handled overarching defense policy topics and special projects, including issues such as detention of enemy combatants, export controls and technology security, troops levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Pentagon’s role in foreign assistance and civil aspects of overseas operations. At the Pentagon from 1998 to 2005, she worked in the secretary of defense’s counterproliferation, European, and NATO policy offices and, as a Presidential Management Fellow, completed rotations in the secretary of defense’s policy, comptroller, and personnel/readiness offices, in the Joint Staff’s Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate, and at the U.S. embassy Sarajevo and the U.S. mission to NATO. Ms. Sanok received a master of public policy degree with concentrations in international security policy and conflict resolution from Harvard University in 1998 and a B.S. degree (with honors) in communication and international relations from Cornell University.