Amy F. Woolf is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.  

Previously, she served as a specialist in nuclear weapons policy at the Congressional Research Service of the US Library of Congress for more than thirty years. In that role, she provided Congress with research support, background information, and expert analysis on issues related to nuclear forces and arms control. She authored many studies on these issues, addressing such topics as nuclear weapons strategy and doctrine; weapons programs in the United States, Russia, and China; strategic arms control and the US-Russian arms control agenda; monitoring and verification in arms control; and hypersonic weapons. Woolf has testified before Congress on these issues and supported arms-control dialogues in international venues. She often addresses academic and expert conferences and workshops, with topics including the US nuclear modernization programs, Congressional views on arms control, nuclear-risk reduction measures, and the future of bilateral and multilateral arms-control endeavors.  

Before joining Congressional Research Service, Woolf was a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia. She also spent a year at the US Department of Defense, working on the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review. Woolf received a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a BA in political science from Stanford University.