Christine Wormuth
Secretary of the Army
Christine Elizabeth Wormuth was born in April 1969 in San Diego, California. She earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and received a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Maryland.
She entered government service as a Presidential Management Intern in President Clinton’s administration, spending the next six and a half years as a civil servant in the Defense Department. Later, she worked as a government consultant and then as a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
During President Obama’s administration, she served in the National Security Council as the Special Assistant to the President and the Defense Policy and Strategy Senior director. She became the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense. President Obama nominated her to serve as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. She was confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote. At the conclusion of her tenure, she was appointed the director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center.
President Joe Biden nominated Wormuth to serve as the Secretary of the Army, the first woman to hold that position. She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate and assumed her position on May 28, 2021.
In the News…
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth is urging service leaders to say out of the “culture wars” less than a month after it was revealed that the Army started an investigation into a top commander for a “sparring match” on social media.
The secretary said that the service “absolutely” warns its general officers present on social media but it said that they should avoid getting drawn into “the inflammatory kind of environment that, frankly, Twitter really lends itself to.”
“The key for senior leaders in an environment that is as politicized, unfortunately, as the one we’re all operating in is to exercise good judgment,” Secretary Wormuth said.
“One of the things I think that’s most important to [Army Chief of Staff General James McConville] and I is keeping the Army apolitical and keeping it out of the culture wars,” she added.
Secretary Wormuth’s reasoning for the approach was tied to the fact that only a small fraction of young Americans are interested in serving, making it necessary for the Army “to be able to have a broad appeal” to reach recruitment goals.
“When only 9 percent of kids are interested in serving, we have got to make sure that we are careful about not alienating wide swaths of the American public to the Army,” she said.
