Alexander Bick

About

Alexander Bick is Associate Professor of Practice in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has more than twenty years of experience in national security policy and research, including senior roles in the U.S. government, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions. His work focuses on strategy, international crisis response, and strengthening mechanisms to anticipate and prepare for an uncertain future. 

Bick served in the Obama and Biden administrations, including twice on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council. He helped craft the 2022 National Security Strategy of the United States and led the “Tiger Team” that planned the U.S. government’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Earlier, he led a review of U.S. policy in the Maghreb and Sahel and played a key role developing the U.S. strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In 2023 he received a Superior Honor Award for his work conceiving and co-directing an initiative to enhance the Department of State’s preparedness for global crises. 

Before entering government, Bick worked for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on elections and peace programs around the world, and as a researcher in the UK Parliament. 

Bick has taught at Barnard College and Johns Hopkins SAIS, held research fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Folger Shakespeare Library, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Leiden. His forthcoming book, Minutes of Empire, explores strategic decision-making within the board of directors of the Dutch West India Company in the seventeenth century. He received a BA in political science from the University of Chicago, an MSc in economic history from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in history from Princeton University.