Michèle Flournoy is the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy of the United States. She was confirmed in the position by the U.S. Senate on February 9, 2009 and was at the time the highest-ranking woman to hold a post at the Pentagon in the facility’s history. Flournoy founded and was named President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in 2007. Prior to co-founding CNAS with Kurt Campbell, she was a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she worked on a broad range of defense policy and international security issues. Previously, Flournoy was a distinguished research professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University (NDU), where she founded and led the university’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) working group, which was chartered by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop intellectual capital in preparation for the Department of Defense’s 2001 QDR. On December 12, 2011, Flournoy announced that she would step down in February 2012 to return to private life and contribute to President Barack Obama’s re-election bid.
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Flournoy
