Rebecca Lissner is a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy and director of the Future of American Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is a leading scholar of American grand strategy who has served in senior national security and foreign policy roles in the White House.
Lissner most recently served as deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy national security advisor to the vice president in the Biden-Harris administration, counseling Vice President Kamala Harris and senior White House leadership on the full range of national security and foreign policy matters, including frequently serving as the vice president’s representative in the U.S. government Principals Committee and Deputies Committee, the senior-level decision-making and crisis-management forums on pressing national security issues composed of cabinet members and their deputies. She directly supported the vice president’s role in crisis response and strategic decision-making on issues such as U.S.-China competition, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and artificial intelligence (AI), defense, and climate policy, including meetings with heads of state and international summits such as the Munich Security Conference, the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties, and AI Safety Summits. As one of Harris’s chief foreign policy advisors, Lissner also helped shape the vice president and Democratic nominee for president’s messaging on national security and foreign policy.
Previously, Lissner served as acting senior director and director for strategic planning on the National Security Council. In that capacity, she helped craft the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy vision as a lead author of President Joe Biden’s National Security Strategy, directed the Russia-Ukraine “Tiger Team” contingency planning process, and provided strategic counsel to the national security advisor. She served as a foreign policy advisor to the Biden and Harris campaigns during the 2020 election and advised Hillary Clinton’s campaign and presidential transition team during the 2016 election. During the Obama administration, she served as special advisor to the deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Before her service at the White House, Lissner was a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where her research focused on American grand strategy. She is the author of two books: Wars of Revelation: The Transformative Effects of Military Intervention on Grand Strategy and An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order (coauthored with Mira Rapp-Hooper). She has held research positions at Georgetown University’s Security Studies program, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Council on Foreign Relations, Yale University’s International Security Studies program, and Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Lissner has written extensively on national security in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other leading outlets, and has provided expert analysis on CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and other major media platforms. She holds an AB in social studies from Harvard University and an MA and PhD in government from Georgetown University.
