Emma Sky is the founding director of Yale’s International Leadership Center. She is a lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs where she teaches courses on great power competition and cooperation, grand strategy and Middle East politics. Sky is a trustee of the HALO Trust, a humanitarian NGO that clears landmines. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (2015) and In a Time of Monsters: Travelling in a Middle East in Revolt (2019). 

Sky served as political advisor to the Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Iraq; as development advisor to the Commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan; as political advisor to the U.S. Security Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process; and as Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She also worked in the Palestinian territories for a decade, managing projects to develop Palestinian institutions and to promote co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Sky has also provided technical assistance on poverty elimination, human rights, access to justice, security sector reform, and conflict resolution in the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America and Africa. 

Courses Taught