Stephanie Young

Stephanie Young
Director, Resource Management Program, RAND Project AIR FORCE; Senior Political Scientist; Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Washington Office

Education

Ph.D., M.A. in history, University of California, Berkeley; B.A. in physics, astrophysics, history, University of California, Berkeley

Media Resources

This researcher is available for interviews.

To arrange an interview, contact the RAND Office of Media Relations at (310) 451-6913, or email media@rand.org.

More Experts

Overview

Stephanie Young is a senior political scientist at RAND, director of the Resource Management Program at RAND Project AIR FORCE, and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She manages a diverse portfolio of research in support of the Department of the Air Force on topics related to acquisition, logistics, industrial base, sustainment, installations/infrastructure, and organizational design. Her primary research interests relate to defense acquisition; budgeting; the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution system (PPBE); and broader resource allocation decisionmaking, but other recent work has focused on strategic competition, security cooperation and building partner capacity, countering-weapons of mass destruction, and U.S. policy in the Middle East and South Asia. In 2012 she spent three months as an analyst embedded with the Special Operations Joint Task Force–Afghanistan, in Kabul.  At RAND she also taught a Ph.D. level course on the U.S. defense budget at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and she previously served as the associate research department director of RAND's Defense and Political Sciences Department. She was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Ph.D. in history and a B.A. in physics and astrophysics.

Recent Projects

  • Using Social Media to Extract Information About Chemical Weapons Incidents: A Methodology and Demonstration of Concept from the Civil War in Syria

Selected Publications

Ben Connable, Stephanie Young, Stephanie Pezard, Andrew Radin, Raphael S. Cohen, Katya Migacheva, James Sladden, Russia's Hostile Measures Combating Russian Gray Zone Aggression Against NATO in the Contact, Blunt, and Surge Layers of Competition, (RR-2539), 2020

Stephanie Young, J. Michael Gilmore, Operating Under a Continuing Resolution A Limited Assessment of Effects on Defense Procurement Contract Awards, (RR-2263), 2019

Larson, Eric V., Derek Eaton, Michael E. Linick, John E. Peters, Agnes Gereben Schaefer, Keith Walters, Stephanie Young, H. G. Massey, and Michelle D. Ziegler, Defense Planning in a Time of Conflict: A Comparative Analysis of the 2001–2014 Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and Implications for the Army, RAND Corporation (RR-1309-A), 2018

Stephanie Young, Daniel Tremblay, Roland Yardley, The U.S. Department of Defense’s Earned Value Management-Analyst Workforce, RAND (RR-1254), 2016

Stephanie Young, Henry Willis, Melinda Moore, Jeffrey Engstrom, Measuring Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) Performance: Capacities, Capabilities, and Sustainability Enablers for Biorisk Management and Biosurveillance, RAND (RR-660), 2014

Richard R. Brennan Jr., et. al., Ending the U.S. War in Iraq: the Final Transition, Operational Maneuver, and Disestablishment of United States Forces-Iraq, RAND (RR-232), 2013

Stephanie Young, ""Would Your Answers Spoil My Questions?": Art and Technology at the RAND Corporation," in Volker Janssen (ed.), Where Minds and Matters Meet: Technology in California and the West, University of California Press, 2012

National Defense Research Institute,, Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: An Update of RAND's 1993 Study, RAND Corporation (MG-1056-OSD), 2010

Honors & Awards

  • Defense Council, Truman National Security Project
  • Edward Teller Fellow in Science and National Security Studies, United States Department of Energy
  • Foreign Policy Initiative Future Leader Program, Foreign Policy Initiative

Commentary

  • Military Acquisition and Procurement

    Speaking in One Voice to Advance Space Acquisition

    Space acquisition is hard, and many challenges remain today for development of true unity of effort. But a new “clean sheet” is not the answer. Such an approach simply cannot take the place of doing the hard work required to realize enduring change.

    Sep 6, 2023

    The RAND Blog

  • Decisionmaking

    Women and Statecraft History

    RAND policy researcher and historian Stephanie Young remembers her key mentors and the impact they had, whether by asking important questions, encouraging academic pursuits, and modeling female excellence.

    Dec 16, 2020

    Center for Strategic and International Studies

Publications