Elizabeth A. Stanley, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government. Previously, she served as Associate Director of Georgetown's Security Studies Program and the Center for Peace and Security Studies. She served in Bosnia, Germany, Macedonia, Italy and Korea as a US Army military intelligence officer, leaving service with the rank of Captain.
Blending her military experience, research, and experience teaching mindfulness techniques, she created Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT) to build warrior resilience and optimize individual and team performance. She has taught MMFT to Marines and Army Soldiers before their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Stanley is the founder of the non-profit Mind Fitness Training Institute, which teaches MMFT to organizations operating in high-stress operational environments. She has extensive practice with mind fitness techniques, including longer-term retreats in the US and Burma (Myanmar), and she has training in somatic-based trauma therapies.
Stanley has served on the National Security Advisory Board of the Sandia National Laboratories, the US Army Science Board and the executive board of Women in International Security (WIIS). She was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the G.D. Searle Foundation, the John Kluge Foundation, the Department of Defense Centers for Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the Office of Naval Research, and Sandia National Laboratories.