Christina Hillsberg — Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA - with Valerie Plame

Years after her successful and impactful career at the CIA, Christina Hillsberg became enthralled with the stories of the trailblazing women who forged new paths within the Agency long before she began her career there in the aughts. These were women who sacrificed their personal lives, risked their safety, defied expectations, and boldly navigated the male-dominated spy organization.Through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly, Agents of Change tells an enthralling and, at times, disturbing story set against the backdrop of the evolving women's movement. It was the 1960s, a "secretarial" era, when women first gained a foothold and pushed against the one-dimensional, pop-culture trope of the sexy Cold War Bond Girl. Underestimated but undaunted, they fought their way, decade-by-decade, through adversity to the top of the spy game.Seamlessly weaving together the individual stories of these exceptional women, Hillsberg deftly tackles not just the fight for gender equality at the CIA, but the current dilemma the Agency faces when dealing with the culmination of a decades-long culture of sexual harassment and assault.Each chapter sheds a light on women's issues during that decade before bringing to life the stories of female CIA operations officers whose experiences were emblematic of that given era. In this fascinating and empowering chronicle, Hillsberg takes readers inside the Agency in a way that's never been done before, paying long overdue tribute to the survivors and thrivers, the indispensable groundbreakers, and defiant rabble-rousers who made the choice to change their lives and in turn, changed history.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780806543499?ic_referral=x-nZ0nROL0ZiFQAFSS3HTxpEdQbYsqcQGsh7bfYJBzYwM3vyYR7_DNrH4Vrq-A8j135G6Ozx2KAIxDtIQEl_JBeHySKBlW8R1TOXvdDx-Q1IvLYjHBD8bcL5MCh9lyTZ1L8gyAChristina Hillsberg is a former CIA intelligence officer, writer, and recognized expert on women in espionage and intelligence tradecraft. The recipient of multiple CIA Exceptional Performance Awards, her work at the CIA included specializing in African politics and leaders as one of the Intelligence Community's few Swahili and Zulu linguists, producing analytic assessments for senior-level policymakers including the President and his Cabinet, and serving in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, clandestinely collecting intelligence from the field. After leaving the CIA, Christina worked in Information Security at Amazon, where she stood up the company's first Insider Threat program, created a new global framework to analyze cyber risks, and established new processes to utilize intelligence tradecraft to analyze information security threats. She now writes full-time and is the author of License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids as well as Agents of Change . Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, Harvard Business Review, Parents Magazine, Thrive Global, Parade, and more. Visit her online at ChristinaHillsberg.com.Hillsberg is in conversation with former career covert CIA operations officer Valerie Plame. During her career with the CIA, Valerie managed top-secret covert programs designed to keep terrorists and rogue nation states from acquiring nuclear weapons. Valerie has served on numerous nonprofit boards and has been a keynote speaker to national and international audiences on resilience, ethical leadership, and crisis management as well as on intelligence, national security, and the global nuclear threat. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Valerie is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Fair Game.*recorded 6/25/2025