Deputy Assistant Secretary for Overseas Operations
Karin von Hippel currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Overseas Operations in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.
Prior to her current position, Ms. von Hippel led the transition planning process for the creation of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, and was also a Senior Adviser in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.
Before joining the Department of State, Ms. von Hippel spent five years as Co-Director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She was also a senior research fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London, and spent several years working for the United Nations and the European Union in Somalia and Kosovo. She has advised the UN on peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and its humanitarian system; USAID on the development potential of Somali remittances; and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on the role of development cooperation in discovering the root causes of terrorism. She has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States and has direct experience in over two dozen conflict zones.
Ms. von Hippel’s numerous publications cover the full conflict spectrum, and include Democracy by Force (Cambridge, 2000), which was short-listed for the Westminster Medal in Military History.
Ms. von Hippel received her Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, her Master of Studies from Oxford University, and her bachelor’s degree from Yale University.
