Shana Tarbell

Shana Tarbell joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in May 2015 as Deputy Director, Risk & Threat Analysis in the Global Security Team (GST). Her team assesses security developments that might impact foundation travelers and local offices as well as the risk posed by individuals or groups of interest who have demonstrated a potentially threatening interest in or attitude toward the foundation and its personnel.

Prior to joining the foundation, Shana had an 18-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency where she was a member of the Senior Intelligence Service working on a broad range of global issues. In her last position as the Director of the Office of Russian and European Analysis, she supervised several hundred analysts and drove analytic support to policymakers during several regional crises. Prior to that, Shana was the Chief of Staff of the CIA’s Information Operations Center, which was responsible for the CIA’s response to cyber threats and its offensive cyber operations. In 2010 and 2011, Shana served as Deputy Chief of Staff to then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, focusing primarily on issues related to terrorism, instability in the Middle East, and dynamics in South Asia. While on the Director of National Intelligence’s National Intelligence Council in 2008 and 2009, she served as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Economics and led the Intelligence Community in assessing the 2008 oil price shock and the global financial crisis, as well as authoring a National Intelligence Assessment on the long-term prospects for global energy. Before serving as a manager of increasingly larger units, Shana served as an analyst on political, economic, and security developments in the former Soviet Union and energy security issues in Eurasia and Africa.

In recognition of her sustained excellence in public service at the senior executive level, Shana was awarded the federal government’s Meritorious Presidential Rank Award in 2015, an honor given to no more than five percent of federal career senior executives. While at the CIA she also received the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and a Director’s Award in recognition of significant support to the Director. Shana received her M.A. from George Washington University in Security Policy and a B.A. from George Mason University in Russian Studies and International Affairs.