MIT World Speakers

Cindy Williams

Cindy Williams' work examines the way the U.S. government plans for and allocates resources among the activities and programs related to national security and international affairs, a study of options for reform of military personnel policies, and an examination of the transition to all-volunteer forces in the militaries of several European countries.

She has served as an Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office, where she led the National Security Division in studies of budgetary and policy choices related to defense and international security. Williams has served as a director and in other capacities at the MITRE Corporation; as a member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon; and as a mathematician at RAND in Santa Monica, California.

Williams holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Irvine. She has published in the areas of command and control and the defense budget, and she is the editor of two books: Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century, (MIT Press 2001) and Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System (MIT Press, 2004). She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a member of the Naval Studies Board, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. She serves on the advisory board of Women in International Security and on the editorial board of International Security.