Amy Zegart

Associate Professor

Department: School of Public Affairs

University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Tel: (310) 825-2455
Fax: (310) 206-0337
zegart@ucla.edu
Personal Website

Amy Zegart is Associate Professor at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs, a Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in U.S. national security policy, U.S. intelligence, global studies, and public policy. In 2003 she was awarded Public Policy Professor of the Year for excellence in teaching.

Zegart has been featured by The National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. She worked on the Clinton Administration's National Security Council staff in 1993. She has also testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provided intelligence training to the Marine Corps and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and advised local, state, and federal officials on intelligence and homeland security issues.

Her research examines organizational deficiencies of American national security agencies. Her first book, Flawed By Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC (Stanford University Press, 1999), won the highest national dissertation award in Political Science and has become standard reading for several U.S. military and intelligence training programs. More recently, she has written about adaptation failures in the CIA and FBI, the role of presidential commissions, port security, and organizational problems in nonproliferation policy and the U.S. State Department. Her most recent book, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton University Press, 2007) won the 2008 Louis Brownlow Book Award, the top literary prize given by the National Academy of Public Administration for outstanding contributions to the field.

Before pursuing an academic career, Zegart spent three years at McKinsey & Company, where she advised senior management in Fortune 100 companies about strategy and organizational effectiveness.

Her analysis has been featured frequently on national television and radio shows, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.

A former Fulbright Scholar, Zegart received an A.B. in East Asian Studies magna cum laude from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University. She serves on Southern California’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband and three children.

For more information please visit Professor Zegart's website at faculty.spa.ucla.edu/zegart.