Rheanne Wirkkala ’11: Pursuing a lifelong passion for public service

In the 1990s, student government at Martha Lake Elementary School in Lynnwood, Washington, was reserved for students in grade 4-6. That did not sit right with Rheanne Wirkkala ’11, then a second-grader.

Seeing her older brother involved with student government convinced an aggrieved Wirkkala to press the school administration to create a position for students in her grade. As a compromise, the principal allowed her to hold a timer during school assemblies to monitor how long it took students to quiet down, tracking for improvement over the school year.

It wasn’t much of a role, but it was a start.

“I’m one of these strange people who knew that I wanted to go into government service from a young age,” says Wirkkala. “I had a really strong sense of enjoyment thinking through representation and how to ensure the voices of the students were heard in my elementary school. I dreamed of coming to Washington and working in Congress, working in government — it’s just always been there.”

That passion endured for Wirkkala, who fulfilled her dream of working in Washington as the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs at the Department of Defense (DOD). Her nomination received Senate confirmation in November 2022, with considerable support from Congressman Adam Schiff, who oversaw the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence when Wirkkala served as a senior staff member on the committee. “She is an intelligence and defense expert — with tremendous experience with the legislative process — and she has served with unmatched integrity,” Schiff said in a statement following Wirkkala’s nomination.

After leaving her position at the Department of Defense, Wirkkala became managing partner of Clarion Strategy, a Washington, D.C.–based strategic advisory firm she helped launch in April 2025 alongside former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, former Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, and former U.S. NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith.

In this new phase of her career, Wirkkala has emphasized the importance of finding meaning in every corner of the workforce. “This is my first time out of government in 15 years… what I am trying to internalize now is there are always places in the community where you can do something positive and meaningful. It doesn’t all have to be big.” 

A place for intellectual curiosity

Even though she knew she wanted to work in government, Wirkkala’s career path has been anything but linear. As an undergraduate, she studied philosophy at Boston University, loading up on political theory courses and studying abroad at Oxford during her senior year. After unsuccessfully applying to jobs in Washington after graduation, Wirkkala followed her boyfriend (now husband) to Japan, teaching English as he completed postgraduate studies in Japanese.

While in Japan, Wirkkala began wrestling with the idea of a master’s program in international relations. She settled on Yale, she says, because she “wanted to be somewhere where I was challenged and where I was surrounded by really hungry people who were really going to push the boundaries of my own thought and my own learning.”

“You can take yourself as far into any vector as you want, just purely based on your own intellectual curiosity."

As a student, Wirkkala interned with the State Department’s Division for Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions, supported by funding from the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. The yearlong program immerses students in the study of grand strategy through three key components: exploring historical moments, conducting summer research, and engaging in modules with leading practitioners. 

“I credit the professors and the practitioners that I had in grand strategy and at the Jackson School for my career trajectory," says Wirkkala. "They were the ones who helped me enter into public service in the first place and have continued to be mentors and friends to me throughout my career.”

‘An inch deep and a mile wide’

Wirkkala first joined the Biden Administration in February 2021 as a special assistant for strategy to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, where she helped determine national defense priorities and long-term strategic planning. Later, at the DOD, she supported Austin and the department’s dealings with Congress as his legislative adviser, leading a team that bridges the gap between the two entities by promoting strategy, policy, and budgets.

This role required “juggling a million things at once,” says Wirkkala, something she learned as a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee. There, she held several roles — director of investigations, deputy director of investigations, policy director — and was also required to write briefings and statements on countless international matters that would be presented before Congress, often with just hours to prepare.

“The cool thing about Congress is that you’re an inch deep and a mile wide,” she says. “You’re shape-shifting and changing from one topic to the next, all day long."

"Working for Rep. Schiff, I was asked to provide as much as I knew about a topic and communicate that information in a way so that he was getting the most important, concise points. And he had to trust that I knew enough on, say, Iran’s nuclear program or the People’s Republic of China. Those skills I honed then — to be nimble and to communicate effectively — are really helping me now.”

Her uniquely varied background gave her the ability to balance the competing priorities of different branches of government. “There are actually a surprisingly small number of people who have worked in the legislative branch and the executive branch, yet the two sides believe they understand each other perfectly,” says Wirkkala. “There’s often a lack of ability to find common ground because of these assumptions. I feel very lucky to have spent time in multiple corners of government, and I always encourage others to do the same.”

Keys to success 

When asked what advice she would give to current students at the Jackson School, Wirkkala's guidance was twofold. 

First, a tangible one: “Don’t be afraid to talk to people; talk to people who visit for a lecture, to your professors, to your teaching assistants, to random people who come through for a day and do a lunch talk.” That openness, she says, was key to her own success, rooted in the understanding that everyone at the Jackson School wanted to help her succeed. 

Her second piece of advice is more intangible: Fight cynicism. In a time when skepticism toward government service runs high, she urges students to draw on the Jackson School’s spirit of optimism and purpose, and to use the school’s strong foundation to make meaningful change. 

Wirkkala also encourages young people interested in working in government to develop a specific expertise, which she believes gives “you so much more credibility in a place like Washington.” Developing that specialty, she notes, was a huge part of her academic experience at the Jackson School. “Stuart Gottlieb was teaching a counterterrorism course when I was here that I took… my final group project in the Grand Strategy program was focused on a counterterrorism homeland security issue,” she recalls. “There were incredible resources — the practitioners, the ability to go to all different parts of the university and learn from professors and practitioners."

For her, becoming an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan while at the DIA, coupled with her communication-building in Congress, helped move her career forward and mold the path to where she is today: consulting on foreign policy matters and continuing the same commitment to public service that first took root at the Jackson School.