Amaryllis Fox

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy was born in New York City on September 22, 1980, as Amaryllis Damerell Thornber. The daughter of an economist and a retired English actress, she grew up in Washington, D.C. and London. Following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed a friend, Fox Kennedy developed an early interest in geopolitical events. She attended the National Cathedral School and The American School in London. In 1999, at the age of 18, she recorded an interview for the BBC with Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi while Suu Kyi was under house arrest, a clandestine operation that foreshadowed her future career.

Fox Kennedy completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Oxford in 2002, where she studied theology and international law. The September 11 attacks, which occurred during her time at Oxford, motivated her to pursue a Master’s Degree in International Security and Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her master’s thesis, which involved an algorithm for identifying terrorist safe havens, drew the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At 22, she became one of the CIA’s youngest female officers, working under “non-official cover” as an art dealer, focusing on preventing terror organizations from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. She served with the agency for eight years, leaving in 2010.

After her clandestine career, Fox Kennedy transitioned into private sector and media roles. In 2012, she founded Mulu, a social commerce platform. She further contributed to the tech industry by joining Twitter in 2014 as a product manager for its global e-commerce team, where she worked on initiatives like “Products and Places” and the “Buy Button” pilot program before departing in 2015. Her memoir, “Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA,” published in 2019, became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 23 languages. It is being adapted into a television series by Apple, starring Brie Larson, with Fox serving as an executive producer. She hosted Netflix’s “The Business of Drugs” in 2020, which ranked #1 in the United States and has provided guest commentary on global events for major news outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, NatGeo, BBC, and Al Jazeera. She has also made political contributions by serving as campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign and held government positions in the Trump administration from 2025 to 2026, including Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Policy and Capabilities.