Melissa Skorka

About

Dr. Melissa L. Skorka is a Middle East and the Islamic World Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a director of the Albright Stonebridge Group’s South Asia practice, where she draws on her distinguished career advising presidential envoys, ambassadors, and national security officials in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Prior to joining Albright Stonebridge, Skorka was a senior fellow at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War Centre and executive director of the Oxford Strategic Intelligence Institute, where she spearheaded major-power competition and geopolitical risk analyses. Skorka also served as senior advisor to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the Afghan minister of peace in Kabul. She completed four consecutive tours with US and NATO armed forces in Afghanistan, serving as strategic advisor to former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired US Marine Corps general Joseph Dunford, helping formulate national security plans and defense operations. Skorka received the US Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terrorism.

Other positions held by Skorka include counterterrorism advisor to US Special Operations commander Lt. Gen. Michael Nagata; senior advisor to Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari’s Crisis Management Initiative; research associate for Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project; and security fellowship director of the Truman National Security Project.

Skorka has held term membership at the Council on Foreign Relations and Oxford Women in Politics. Her work and commentaries have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other media.

As a Rotary Ambassadorial and Smith Richardson Scholar, she received her PhD and double master’s degree (first-class honors) from Oxford University. Her doctoral monograph explored the modern history of Islamist militant political adaptation to Western policy, focusing on human rights, security, and rule of law.