Please note this is a hybrid event - you have the option to attend in person or virtually. Registrations are required for all attendees. For in-person attendees, the event will run from 12 - 2 pm and will include lunch. The live stream will begin around 1:10 pm (virtual attendees will be sent a link for the event via email).
Join DACOR for a conversation with Christina Hillsberg, a former intelligence operative, on her new book Agents of Change.
Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA (June 24, 2025) is 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.
Agents of Change is set against the backdrop of the evolving women’s movement and brings the reader into the agency’s present day. 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. From agency training for covert ops at “The Farm,” to leadership positions within the agency’s hierarchy, they fought their way, decade-by-decade, through adversity to the top of the spy game.
These women paved the way for agents like Hillsberg, who played a critical role in national security. Years after her successful and impactful career at the CIA, 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, routinely passed over for promotions, recruiting assets, and managing clandestine operations.
Inside the present-day CIA, women continue to break new ground, with new improvements in its career development programs, with new barriers being broken by its intrepid and skilled female agents. But the organization is failing at accountability. It is still sorely lacking in diversity, and it consistently loses talent (the agency would not reveal its retention rates).
Crucially, Agents of Change does not overlook the agency’s mishandling of sexual harassment and assault. 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 misogyny, discrimination, and systemic bias against women and minorities.
Hillsberg pays a 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.
Christina Hillsberg 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. Christina 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, 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. In 2017, she left Amazon to become a writer. She is the author of Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA and License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, Harvard Business Review, Parents Magazine, Thrive Global, Parade, and more.
Location
Setting: Hybrid DACOR Bacon House OR Online 1801 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 UNITED STATES
