Dr. Mary Thompson-Jones

Dr. Mary Thompson-Jones is a professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and holds the chair for Women in Diplomacy and National Security. Her book, America in the Arctic: Foreign Policy and Competition in the Melting North (Columbia University Press 2025), explores the United States’ longstanding political and diplomatic engagement with Arctic partners. In addition to core courses she has taught an elective, “Imagining the Arctic,” and as a member of the Newport Arctic Scholars Initiative she has presented on Arctic Security panels in Denmark, Norway, and Greenland.

She is the author of To the Secretary: Leaked Embassy Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect, (Norton 2016). Her diplomatic experience spans a 23-year career as a foreign service officer in leadership roles in the Czech Republic, Canada, Guatemala, Spain, and Washington, D.C. She retired with the rank of Minister-Counselor.

Before coming to the Naval War College, she directed a master’s program in global studies and international relations at Northeastern University. She holds a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts in law and diplomacy from Tufts University’s Fletcher School, and undergraduate degrees in journalism and political science from California State University.