About Fiona Hill
Fiona Hill is the Robert Bosch Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. From 2017-2019 she was on leave from Brookings and served as the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the US National Security Council.
From 2006-2009, she was the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. Prior to joining Brookings, she was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, DC, and held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Hill holds an A.M. in Soviet Studies and Ph.D. in History from Harvard University; an M.A. degree in Russian and Modern History from St. Andrews University in Scotland; and has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia—and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as a historian and policymaker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.
Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern England: “There is nothing for you here, pet,” he said.
The coal-miner’s daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses.
By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink—and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia’s fate.
In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.