Kimberly Lehn is Senior Director at the Pacific Forum, in charge of the newly established Honolulu Defense Forum (HDF). Launched in January 2024 under the banner “Operationalizing Integration in the Indo-Pacific,” the HDF seeks to facilitate dialogue and solutions between a wide range of actors from the private and public sectors to bolster deterrence in the face of an increasingly contested regional security environment.
She is a national security professional with nearly 20 years of experience in the U.S. federal government and in the private sector. She is a Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm advising leading companies on national security issues; and previously served in management and analytic roles at the Central Intelligence Agency as well as on assignments to the National Security Council’s Directorate of East Asia, the Department of State’s Intelligence and Research Bureau, and on the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. As a professional staff member, she led the committee’s oversight over U.S. Indo-Pacific Command among other issues that focused on the national security challenges facing the United States, particularly strategic competition with China and Russia, and the important role alliances and partnerships play to build collective security.
