Cindy Williams is a former Editorial Board Member for International Security quarterly journal, and Research Affiliate of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a Principal Research Scientist until her retirement in 2013. Her interests include budgets and budgeting for national security and the capabilities and personnel practices of armed forces in North America and Europe. Formerly she was an Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office, where she led the National Security Division. Formerly she was an Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office, where she led the National Security Division in studies of budgetary and policy choices related to defense and international security. Dr. Williams has served as a director and in other capacities at the MITRE Corporation in Bedford, Massachusetts; as a member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon; and as a mathematician at RAND in Santa Monica, California. Her areas of specialization include the U.S. national security budget, military personnel policy, command and control of military forces, and conventional air and ground forces.

Dr. Williams holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Irvine. She has published in the areas of command and control and the defense budget, and she is the editor of two books: Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century (MIT Press 2001) and Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System (MIT Press, 2004). She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a member of the Naval Studies Board, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. She serves on the advisory board of Women in International Security and on the editorial board of International Security.