Climate and Readiness

Katharina Best is associate director of the Personnel, Training, and Health (PT&H) program within the RAND Arroyo Center, and a senior operations researcher at the RAND Corporation. Her research interests focus on applications of operations research and mathematical modeling, including work on risk management, military force management, manpower and workforce issues, acquisition, and financial modeling. Best's work at RAND covers acquisition decisionmaking, force planning, readiness, and personnel issues across the Army and Department of Defense, and focuses on development of decision support processes and tools. Prior to coming to RAND, she studied the dynamics of the college education market in the United States as well as the effect of loans and credit on decisions made by students, parents, lenders, and institutions of higher education. She also worked as a corporate risk consultant at Oliver Wyman Financial Services, where she sought to apply risk management practices from the finance industry in other types of corporate management environments. Best received her Ph.D. and M.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Michigan and her B.S. in systems engineering from the University of Virginia.

Kimberly Jackson was appointed as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Readiness in January 2021. In this capacity, Jackson serves as the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense for strategic and operational readiness of the Armed Services. Prior to re-joining DoD, Jackson was an international and defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, directing studies on the effects of military culture on inter-service competition and the development of senior military officers, DoD’s evolving roles and capabilities in supporting the National Defense Strategy, and the comparative advantages of defense organizational structures and command and control models in strategic competition. She also led research on topics including professional military education and talent management, general/flag officer management, special operations, security cooperation, and Reserve Component forces. Additionally, from 2019-2021, Jackson was a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Until 2020, Jackson was an officer in the United States Navy Reserve, where she held assignments within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Naval Special Warfare, and in the Chief of Naval Operations' Strategic Studies Group. Jackson holds an M.P.P. and an M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

Richard Kidd serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Environment and Energy Resilience. In this role heprovides policy direction and program oversight for the Department's environmental restoration, compliance and clean-up activities as well as policy direction to operational energy and installation energy resilience. This portfolio also includes providing strategic direction to the Department's climate change adaptation and organizational sustainability initiatives. Additionally, he oversees more than $250M in research funds aimed at advancing energy and environmental technologies. This is Kidd's sixth assignment in the Senior Executive Service having served in SES positions across four Federal agencies and the White House. Prior to joining the Federal Government, he served as an emergency relief worker with the United Nations and has international travel and work experience in over 70 countries. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and has a master's degree in public policy and business administration from the Yale School of Management.

Molly McIntosh is director of the Personnel, Readiness and Health Program (PRH) within the RAND National Security Research Division, and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation. The PRH research portfolio is focused on strategic human capital management in the national security sector, and is framed around four broad themes: personnel management, readiness, support programs and services, and health services and systems. Since joining RAND, McIntosh's research has focused on characterizing the DoD cyber workforce, work requirements, and compensation; comparing compensation for DoD civilians and workers in the private sector; and costing billets for large DoD organizations. Prior to joining RAND, McIntosh was Research Program Director of the Navy Compensation and Personnel Policy Program at CNA, which runs the U.S. Department of the Navy's FFRDC. At CNA, McIntosh led studies on a variety of military personnel issues, including the effectiveness of special and incentive pays, policies to address manning shortfalls, and drivers of officer and enlisted retention and performance. McIntosh also served as CNA's Scientific Analyst to Director, Military Personnel Plans and Policy Division, U.S. Navy and as Field Representative to Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific. McIntosh has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a B.A. in economics from University of California, Berkeley.

Scott Stephenson is an environmental and political geographer at the RAND Corporation with interests in climate security and policy. His research utilizes geospatial modeling and analysis to investigate linked human and natural systems. His recent projects have explored topics such as Air Force installation hazard resilience, links between climate change and force readiness, the geography of National Critical Functions, Army logistics in Europe, and Arctic transport and geopolitics. He serves as an Associate Editor of the journal Polar Geography and was an assistant professor of geography at the University of Connecticut from 2014-2019. Stephenson has a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University.