Farewell to Jean Woodward

Jean Woodward, Assistant Director of the National Security Fellows Program, with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper following a National Security Fellows Executive Program he taught at the Kennedy School in August 2018. (Photo by Bernadette Schoukroun)

After 32 years at Harvard Kennedy School, Jean Woodward will retire at the end of June.

Starting at Harvard Kennedy School in the spring of 1987, Woodward’s first position was with Executive Education’s National Security Program as a program coordinator and as a writing consultant/coordinator for the National Security Fellows. She worked on the inaugural, historic Executive Program for Soviet Officers in 1991, which brought Soviet general and flag officers to Harvard Kennedy School to study democracy-building.

Woodward has worked with every group of Fellows since the class of 1987 and has administered the Program for 20 years, continuing in that position when the Program joined the Belfer Center last year. She maintains close relationships with the more than 600 NSF alumni and has been privileged, she says, to watch their careers flourish. “These outstanding officers and intelligence community officials,” she notes, “have gone on to be chiefs of services or agencies, general and flag officers, and leaders of non-profit organizations—devoting their lives to public service.”

She has mentored hundreds of other students, fellows, and young people during her time at Harvard.

Prior to Harvard, Woodward held positions in electoral field organization, curriculum publishing, and writing and administration in the field of popular music and studio recording. A native Bostonian, she studied anthropology and communications at Syracuse University, both of which she employed in her career working with the military.