Rachel Kleinfeld

Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld advises governments, philanthropists, and activists on how democracies make major social change. 

Raised in a log house on a dirt road in Fairbanks, Alaska, Rachel received her BA from Yale University and her M. Phil and D. Phil from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. 

As a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Rachel focuses on how troubled democracies can improve, with a particular focus on countries facing violence, rising authoritarianism, polarization, and corruption. 

In 2010, Time magazine named Rachel one of the top 40 political leaders under 40 in America for her work as the founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project.  Under her leadership, the Truman Project built a membership of over 80,000 supporters and chapters in most major cities to assist the campaigns of hundreds of national, state, and local candidates and elected officials, advocate for legislation nationally and in multiple states, and foster a new generation of military veterans and national security leaders to advance policies that would enhance global security, democracy, and human dignity. 

Rachel serves on the boards of various for-profit companies and social sector organizations that align with her values at the intersections of security, human dignity, and empowerment.  From 2011–2014 she served on the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, which advised the Secretary of State quarterly. She currently serves on the boards of Freedom House, Protect Democracy, and States United, as well as on the National Task Force on Election Crises and the agenda committee of the Halifax Security Forum. 

Rachel lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, a sculptor, and their two fierce daughters.