Participant Biographies

Sue Mi Terry

Sue Mi Terry

Director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Plenary Session 4 - "Dealing with North Korea Nuclear Threat"

Dr. Sue Mi Terry is Director of the Asia Program and Director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Dr. Terry has had a distinguished career in intelligence, policymaking, and academia. She served as a Senior Analyst at the CIA (2001-2008), where she produced hundreds of intelligence assessments, including a record number of contributions to the President’s Daily Brief. From 2008 to 2009, Dr. Terry was the Director of Korea, Japan, and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. In that role, she formulated, coordinated, and implemented U.S. government policy on Korea and Japan, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. From 2009 to 2010, she was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council. In that position, she led the U.S. Intelligence Community’s production of strategic analysis on East Asian issues and authored multiple National Intelligence Estimates. From 2010 to 2011, Dr. Terry served as the National Intelligence Fellow in the David Rockefeller Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York. Since leaving the government, Dr. Terry has been a Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) (2011-2015), Senior Advisor for Korea at BowerGroupAsia (2015-2017), and Senior Fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (2017-2021). She holds a B.A. in political science from New York University, and received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.