MEET CHRISTINA


Photo by Alla Polyakova

Christina Hillsberg is a former CIA intelligence officer and writer. While at the CIA, she wrote analytic assessments for the President, his Cabinet, and other senior-level policymakers. Christina specialized in African politics and leaders and was one of the Intelligence Community's few Swahili and Zulu linguists. She later worked in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, clandestinely collecting intelligence from the field. She is the recipient of multiple CIA Exceptional Performance Awards.

After leaving the CIA, Christina worked in Information Security at Amazon, where she established the company’s first Insider Threat program, built a new global framework to analyze cyber risks, and created new processes to leverage intelligence tradecraft to analyze information security threats. In 2017, she left Amazon to care for her children, stealing away to write whenever she can. She is the author of Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA and License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids. Her writing has been featured in outlets such as The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, Harvard Business Review, Parents Magazine, Thrive Global, Parade, and more. She lives near Chicago, Illinois with her husband, Ryan Hillsberg, also a former intelligence officer, their five kids, and two Rhodesian Ridgebacks. She is represented by Alyssa Maltese at Root Literary.