Amy Kramer

Amy Kramer joined the United States civil service in 2020 as part of the inaugural class of McCain Fellows in the U.S. Department of Defense. She currently serves as the Country Director for Thailand and Singapore within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Before transitioning to her current foreign affairs role, Amy previously served as a Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of the U.S. Army, supporting special projects mainly focused on personnel policy and quality of life issues for Soldiers. In 2022, Amy was the lead author of the U.S. Army’s comprehensive parenthood, pregnancy, and postpartum policy change effort. She also previously worked for the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Intelligence and served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Military Personnel.

Amy is passionate about the strategic national security benefits of gender equality and has conducted extensive research at the intersection of gender and security. She also wrote two award-winning theses on the impact of female leaders in U.S. Army ROTC programs and Chinese female peacekeepers in UN operations. In 2016, she researched the role of women's empowerment in conflict resolution and conducted oral histories of female military and government leaders across four continents.

Amy graduated from Duke University as a Robertson Scholar with highest honors in Public Policy and Political Science and earned her master’s degree in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University in Beijing as a Schwarzman Scholar.