N. W. Collins

N. W. Collins is dedicated to public leadership and mission advancement, undertaking her first assignment in 1992.

For more than twenty years, Dr. Collins has led research programs, taught security studies, and advised capstones. She is a fellow of Yale University and serves as the DSS chair of Columbia University.

Dr. Collins has served as a senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Defense for more than a decade, with tours at JSOC and DARPA, among others. She has overseen programs, activities, and assessments with the intelligence community and special operations forces. From 2020-2022, she served as a senior fellow at West Point. 

She is the author of Grey Wars (Yale University Press, 2021 and 2024). Her essays and commentaries appear in a range of publications, including Forbes, The New York Times, TIME, U.S. News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal. One project, Olympics Eternal, considers the global mission of the games. Two series, American Futures and Alpha Capital, analyze accelerating investments and strategic technology. 

Over the past three decades, Dr. Collins has received awards, fellowships, and grants from, among others, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Yale University. Collins is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Commission on Military History. She attended the Loomis Chaffee School and later served on its board of trustees for a decade. She received a BA from Georgetown University and later returned as a senior fellow. Collins completed an MA and a PhD at the University of London and a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. 

Since her first circuit competition in 1989, Collins has pursued speed on the water, on tracks, and in the air. Collins has raced in all fifty U.S. states and in more than seventy countries. She is a member of U.S. Sailing.