ElizabethÌýShackelford
- 2022 SPEAKER
- 2023 SPEAKER

Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. Her resignation letter was the first to draw widespread attention to the declining state of diplomacy under Donald Trump.Ìý
As a foreign service officer, Shackelford served in Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, Poland and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war in 2013, she received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the department’s highest honor for consular work.
Shackelford is the author of The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, winner of the 2020 Douglas Dillon Book Award.
Shackelford’s op-eds and commentary have been published in numerous outlets, including The Los Angeles Times, Slate and Politico. She frequently appears on media outlets such as CNN, BBC and Voice of America to provide foreign policy analysis. Shackelford has a BA from Duke University and a JD from the University of Pittsburgh.