Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA

Join us for a lively discussion of Christina Hillsberg's book Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA. Hillsberg is a former intelligence operative who has written a narrative exploration of the agency’s history, told through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly until now. The book fills a necessary gap in the agency’s history and takes a critical view of the agency’s indisputable record of suppressing the women who would become its most valued trailblazers—and its most vocal troublemakers. 

These were women who sacrificed their personal lives, risked their safety, defied expectations, and boldly navigated the male-dominated spy organization, routinely passed over for promotions, recruiting assets, and managing clandestine operations. 

Terry Shames, who worked at the CIA and is an acclaimed, award winning mystery writer, will provide additional energy and knowledge of both the CIA and writing. 

You won't want to miss this program and a chance to ask questions to both writers.

About the Speakers

Christina Hillsberg of Chicago is a former CIA intelligence officer and writer. While at the CIA, she wrote analytic assessments for the president, his cabinet, and other senior-level policymakers. Hillsberg specialized in African politics and leaders and was one of the intelligence community's few Swahili and Zulu linguists. She later worked in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, clandestinely collecting intelligence from the field. She is the recipient of multiple CIA Exceptional Performance Awards. After leaving the CIA, Hillsberg 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.

Terry Shames is the award-winning, best-selling author of 11 Samuel Craddock mysteries. As well as winning the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, her first book, A Killing at Cotton Hill, was also shortlisted for the Strand Critics Award. She has been short-listed for the Left Coast Crime Lefty Award, and in 2016 won the RWA Editor’s Choice award for The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake. The eleventh in the series, The Troubling Death of Maddy Benson, October 2024, was an Amazon Editor's Pick. In April 2024, she debuted the Jessie Madison thriller series with Perilous Waters. In March she published Out of Control, her first domestic suspense novel. After graduating from The University of Texas, Shames worked for the CIA for three years in the China division. After she left the CIA she went into computer programming and analysis for 10 years, during which she began writing fiction. Shames lives in Southern California with her husband, her dog Monty and her cat Max. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers and the Texas Institute of Letters.

An International Relations Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.

Photos courtesy the speakers; main image DALLE commons, Scott Snibbe, Hugh Leeman, Gerald Harris.

ORGANIZER Frank Price

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