Christine Blasey Ford

Christine Margaret Blasey Ford, born in November 1966, grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and attended the Holton-Arms School, a private all-girls university-preparatory school in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1978 through 1984. During her youth, she was part of a regional diving team and even accompanied diver Greg Louganis on a trip to the White House to discuss the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott. Her academic journey began with an undergraduate degree in experimental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1988, followed by a master’s in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University in 1991. She furthered her education with a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Southern California in 1996, where her dissertation focused on “Measuring young children’s coping responses to interpersonal conflict.” In 2009, she earned a master’s degree in epidemiology, specializing in biostatistics, from Stanford University School of Medicine.

Ford has built a career in academia and the private sector as a biostatistician and research psychologist, specializing in designing statistical models for research projects. Since 1998, she has been a research psychologist and biostatistician in the Stanford School of Medicine psychiatry department. Her role since 2011 has also included serving as a psychology professor in the PGSP-Stanford Consortium for Clinical Psychology, a joint program between Palo Alto University and Stanford. In these roles, she teaches subjects such as psychometrics, study methodologies, clinical trials, and statistics to doctoral students, and also contributes to dissertation committees. Her professional experience extends to consulting work for various pharmaceutical companies, including a directorship of biostatistics at Corcept Therapeutics and biostatistical consulting for Titan Pharmaceuticals and Brain Resource. She has also led roundtable discussions at the American Statistical Association’s Annual FDA-Industry meetings, focusing on statistical analyses in industry-FDA interactions.

In 2018, Christine Blasey Ford gained national attention when she publicly accused then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault during their high school years in the summer of 1982. Her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was a pivotal moment, despite which Kavanaugh’s nomination was confirmed. Following her testimony, Ford faced significant challenges, including death threats and the necessity of relocating multiple times with her family. Despite the personal toll, she continued to advocate for trauma survivors, donating remaining funds from a crowdfunding campaign to relevant organizations. She has been recognized in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2019 and nominated for a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Distinguished Alumna Award for her courage in ‘speaking truth to power.’ Her recent memoir, ‘One Way Back,’ published in 2024, delves into her experiences and reflections.