RAND Women to Watch

Rose Gottemoeller

Gottemoeller is an American diplomat who served as Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, the first woman ever appointed to that post. She was a researcher at RAND from 1977 to 1993. Learn more »

Nicole Lurie

Lurie is a physician, professor, and public health official who was appointed as the U.S. director of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the global partnership to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics, in May 2021. She previously served as the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response during the Obama administration. While at RAND from 2002 to 2009, she was the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Professor of Health Policy. Learn more »

Susan L. Marquis

Marquis served as the Frank and Marcia Carlucci Dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School from 2008 until 2021 and vice president of innovation at RAND from 2012 to 2021. Under her leadership, Pardee RAND completed a reimagining and redesign that doubled the size of its incoming cohort and transformed its curriculum. She is the author of the book I Am Not a Tractor!: How Florida Farmworkers Took on the Fast Food Giants and Won.

Helen Morris

Morris says that working at RAND was the best job she ever had. She joined Project RAND in 1946, then located in the Drafting Loft at the Douglas Aircraft Company. Her work included computing optimum trajectories to go into orbit, calculations for the first RAND report, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. She would become the first woman to receive a physics degree from the University of Washington.

Terri Tanielian

Tanielian was appointed as Special Assistant to the President for Veterans Affairs in March 2021. Prior to her White House role, she was a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, where she led studies examining the needs of the military community. She also served as a RAND Congressional Fellow with the House Committee on Veterans Affairs where she informed evidence-based policymaking designed to reduce veteran suicide.

Christine Wormuth

Wormuth was appointed the 25th Secretary of the U.S. Army, the first woman to hold the Army's top civilian post. She was previously a senior fellow at RAND, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center, and an expert on foreign policy, national security, and homeland security issues. Prior to RAND, she served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the Obama administration.

Tora Bikson

Bikson was a nationally known advocate for ethics in social science research who worked at RAND from 1974 to 2013. She was among the first experts to address the United States' rules for human subjects protection in research in the social and behavioral sciences. Learn more »

Susan (Sue) Hosek

Hosek was a senior economist who held several leadership roles at RAND and was pivotal in launching the Pittsburgh office. Over her long career, she led or contributed to RAND's most noteworthy studies that sought to improve support for U.S. military personnel, veterans, and their families.

Iao Katagiri

Katagiri began her 40-year career at RAND as a researcher on one of the largest federally-funded social science experiments—finding a better way to provide decent affordable housing to low-income households. She helped launch the Institute for Civil Justice, a RAND research center, and raised its first $8 million. She oversaw legal and regulatory interactions with the city of Santa Monica and was RAND's longtime director of community relations. Learn more »

Leona Woods Marshall Libby

Libby was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor. She worked at RAND from the mid-1960s to 1976. Learn more »

Margaret Mead

Mead was an American cultural anthropologist. She studied Russian culture and attitudes toward authority while at RAND from 1948 to 1950. Learn more »

• Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character1951

Melinda Moore

Moore's research focused on global health issues, mainly infectious diseases, health security, and public health preparedness. Her extraordinary career included 20 years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, five years at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and 14 years at RAND. Learn more »

Nancy Nimitz

Nimitz joined RAND in 1952 and specialized in economic studies of Soviet agriculture. Her work involved research on Soviet national income and product.