Stacie L. Pettyjohn is director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE, and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a member of the faculty at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. From 2014 to 2020 she was the codirector of the RAND Center for Gaming. Her primary research areas include wargaming, U.S. defense policy, military posture, and internet freedom.

She is the author of the RAND monograph U.S. Global Defense Posture, 1783-2011 and the coauthor of several other reports, including Access Granted: Political Challenges to the U.S. Overseas Military Presence, 1945-2014, The Posture Triangle: A New Framework for U.S. Air Force Global Presence, Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of the Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits, and Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists. Her work has also been published in academic journals such as Security Studies and International Negotiation, and her commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, Defense News, The National Interest, Asia Times, and The Daily Star.

Previously, Pettyjohn was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace, and a TAPIR fellow at the RAND Corporation. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in history and political science from the Ohio State University.