Mary Kissel is executive vice president and senior policy adviser at Stephens Inc., a Little Rock, Arkansas–based, privately held financial services firm, where she advises management and clients on foreign policy and geopolitical risk. Prior to joining Stephens, she served as senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo from October 2018 to January 2021. In that role, she provided advice to advance the national interests of the United States, conducted special projects for the secretary, and traveled to more than 60 countries.
Prior to her State Department appointment, Ms. Kissel was a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, where she served as chief foreign policy writer and host of the Foreign Edition podcast, and as editorial page editor for Asia-Pacific, based in Hong Kong. She has appeared on major television and radio networks and podcasts around the world, including Australian Broadcasting Corp., CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, and Sky News. In addition to her WSJ work, her writing has been published in The Spectator and the Far Eastern Economic Review. She started her career in the fixed-income division of Goldman Sachs in New York and London.
Ms. Kissel is currently a member of the board of directors of XPO Logistics Inc. and serves as an advisory board member of the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue and the Marathon Initiative in Washington, D.C. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and host of the Nixon Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security. Ms. Kissel is a graduate of Harvard College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
