Linda Kirschke

Linda Kirscheke advises organizations and U.S. federal agencies on strategy, operations and communications in complex political and security environments, focusing on risk analysis, organizational assessments, program design, consortium building and monitoring and evaluation. As a contractor at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), she assessed and advised on political and conflict risk, civil society organizations, monitoring and evaluation and program design across Eastern Europe and Africa. For USAID implementing partners she has analyzed security issues in the Central African Republic to inform the design of a peacebuilding program and worked in Mali to assess potential consortium partners for a $12 million initiative to support youth. She has gathered and analyzed data on agricultural value chains, trade opportunities and food security to support business development initiatives that secured over $80 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). She has worked for international organizations to develop and implement consortia with civil society organizations in North, Central and Southern Africa and led communications and monitoring and evaluation initiatives to showcase institutional partnerships with schools, hospitals and emergency food assistance programs in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Ukraine, India, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Gaza, West Bank and Israel.

She teaches courses on international security issues and has held research positions at the Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame. Her articles on armed conflict and civil-military strife have appeared in Comparative Political Studies, The Journal of Modern African Studies and Sicherheit und Frieden (Security and Peace). She received her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.