Jill Dougherty served as CNN correspondent for three decades, reporting from more than 50 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, China, North Korea, and Russia. Her chief area of interest and expertise is Russia and the post-Soviet region.

She is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service. She also is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. and a CNN Contributor who provides expert commentary on Russia.

Dougherty joined CNN in 1983, shortly after it was founded by Ted Turner. She served as CNN’s Moscow Bureau Chief for almost a decade, named to that post in 1997. She covered many significant news events in Russia and the former Soviet Union, including the presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s post-Soviet economic transition, terrorist attacks, the conflict in Chechnya, Georgia’s Rose Revolution, and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and Maidan Revolution.

She served as CNN White House Correspondent from 1991 to 1996, covering the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. From 2009 through 2013 she was CNN’s Foreign Affairs Correspondent, based at the network’s Washington, D.C. Bureau covering the U.S. State Department. She also served as U.S. Affairs Editor for CNN International and as CNN International’s Managing Editor for the Asia-Pacific region, based at the network’s regional headquarters in Hong Kong.

Dougherty left full-time employment with CNN in 2014 and was selected as a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. There, she conducted research on the Russian media and the Russian government’s international and domestic communications strategy. In 2014 and 2015, she continued that work as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. In 2015, she conducted field research at the International Centre for Defense and Security in Tallinn, Estonia. In 2017 and 2018, she was a Distinguished Visiting Practitioner at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, teaching courses in U.S. foreign policy, with a focus on the role of media in the formulation of foreign policy.

Dougherty has a B.A. in Slavic languages and literature from the University of Michigan, a certificate of language study from Leningrad State University, and an M.A. from Georgetown University. Her graduate thesis explored Russia’s soft power diplomacy. Her articles on international issues and book reviews have appeared in CNN, HuffPost, The Atlantic, The Moscow Times, Rhe Wilson Quarterly, The Cipher Brief, The Washington Post, and other publications.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Affairs Council.