Piloting a course in public service and scholarship

From a young age, Roni Yadlin PhD in Public Policy 2025 was determined to fly high—literally and figuratively. And as a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a pilot, Yadlin is continuing to reach new heights in her journey of service and scholarship. 

Her trajectory—engineer, pilot, scholar—is one she set early in life. Now, as she prepares to return to the service after earning her doctorate, she hopes to use what she has learned to help the Air Force meet its future challenges and, eventually, to teach future leaders. 

An early influence on Yadlin’s career path was her father, an engineer who had served in the Israeli Air Force.  

“My dad and I have really similar personalities, and I wanted to be like my dad in that way,” Yadlin says. 

Yadlin’s childhood was spent mostly in southern California, but she holds strong memories of visiting family in Israel and living for a stint near an air force base, watching planes fly overhead. Her Israeli father met her mother, who grew up in New York, while she was working as a choral conductor for a choir made up of members of kibbutzim from across the country; her dad would regularly sing in the choir. 

After some time in New York, where her father studied at Cornell University, and a brief time in Israel, Yadlin and her family—she is the second oldest of four daughters—settled in California, where she played a lot of sports, especially soccer, and was drawn to music as well, playing the piano, viola, and oboe.  

When it came time to look at college, Yadlin aimed for a path that could lead to her either becoming a pilot or an astronaut.  

“The Air Force Academy was a place that I could study astronautical engineering,” Yadlin says. “I could have a good chance of being a pilot when I graduated, and I could play soccer.” So, she attended the academy and embarked on a journey of military and public service.  

Yadlin graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in astronautical engineering and then attended Oxford University for a two-year master’s degree in engineering through a scholarship from the Air Force (the chance to keep playing soccer was an added perk—one of the highlights of her Oxford experience was winning the British national college soccer tournament). 

Back in the United States, she attended the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program, which offers NATO countries an opportunity to send student pilots to train with American counterparts.  

“In my class, I had pilots from the Dutch Air Force and instructors from the Netherlands and Germany. There were students and instructors from Italy and Norway,” Yadlin says. “So that was my introduction to the international aspects of military service and the broader global context.” 

Yadlin got her wings and was assigned to fly the MC-12, a tactical reconnaissance aircraft designed to orbit directly over troops on the ground to provide video sensors or radio communications—“to give them a bigger picture,” Yadlin says. She was deployed twice to Afghanistan. 

As the MC-12 was being phased out of service, she was then assigned to the B-1—the Air Force’s fastest bomber aircraft—and did a six-month deployment to Guam, with missions in the Pacific region, and then six months in Qatar, where flying missions took her to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. 

“After eight years or so of flying, I reached the point in my Air Force career at which officers typically move on to more professional military education,” Yadlin says. With her bomber background, she was sent to the School of Advanced Nuclear Deterrence Studies in Alabama to do a yearlong course, which she followed with another year at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) taking an intensive program studying military air and space strategy.  

Every year, SAASS chooses one or two exceptional students to pursue a PhD program, which candidates complete in an accelerated three years. These scholars eventually return to SAASS to teach. When SAASS chose Yadlin for this program, she knew she wanted a course of study that would allow her to research domestic politics, civil-military relations, and security issues. Harvard Kennedy School felt like the right choice.  

“What really appealed to me about the Kennedy School specifically was that it was a public policy school,” she says. “I have always wanted what I study to be applicable to the real world. A policy school is deliberate about looking at problems and coming up with actionable solutions.” She liked the fact that she could remain deeply connected to the policy world and government while doing her accelerated doctoral studies. Yadlin was also drawn to the School’s mission. “Service is important to me,” she says, “from my family, from the values that were instilled in me as I was growing up.” 

Through the PhD in Public Policy (PPOL) Program, which is administered jointly by HKS and the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Yadlin took classes at the Kennedy School. One memorable course was IGA-211: Central Challenges of American National Security, Strategy, and the Press, where Yadlin learned from faculty members including Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government.  

“The work he does is so applicable to foreign affairs and military affairs, and learning from him was very exciting,” she says. “We focused on direct challenges that the United States is facing right now.” Yadlin loved the class assignments that required students to distill extremely complex issues into concrete, concise policy papers—a type of thinking and writing that, she says, will serve her well in her future life in the military. 

For her dissertation, Yadlin focused her research questions on the civil-military divide, military culture, and how people think about service after they have left the military.  

“People choose to go into service for a wide variety of reasons, but once they join the military, they are part of a very distinct culture that is very separate from civilian life and civilian culture,” she says. “And even within the military, the branches—and even individual roles—have different cultures.”

“In a lot of ways, military culture follows people outside of the military,” she says. “In some ways, it’s positive. Many service members continue to find means to serve their community and serve their country, even outside of military service.” But Yadlin says there can also be negative aspects, including the ways in which people may become desensitized to violence or struggle to overcome the disengagement of moral barriers inherent in military training.

Yadlin also had great support from her dissertation committee members, two of whom are HKS faculty members: Erica Chenoweth, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, and Dara Kay Cohen, a professor of public policy. Yadlin says Chenoweth helped her think about how to align her personal values with her public service mission, and how to navigate challenges to her values. With Chenoweth’s encouragement, Yadlin also became a non-resident tutor at Pforzheimer House, where Chenoweth and Zoe Marks, a lecturer in public policy, are faculty deans. 

Beyond her formal studies, Yadlin found an engaging community at Harvard. Every two weeks faculty members and students in her cohort would have lunch in the HKS Café and just talk through ideas.  

“It was really welcoming,” she says, “and an inclusive environment where people are excited and encouraging about the work others are doing.” With fellow students of all ages and nationalities, and with interests as varied as their backgrounds, Yadlin enjoyed the breadth and variety of experience.  

One moment with her PhD cohort that stands out in Yadlin’s mind was when she was promoted from major to lieutenant colonel.  

“The Air Force tradition is that you have a promotion party where you pay and everyone celebrates,” she says, “so I invited my cohort out to a brewery.” Her fellow students decided to celebrate her with a tailored gift. “They found a model airplane—of a trainer aircraft that was used during World War II—that the United States calls ‘the Texan,’ but the British, who used the same airplane, call ‘the Harvard.’ So, they made an effort to find something really thoughtful.” Yadlin says her cohort “care about people for who they are.”

Yadlin is looking forward to her next celebration: graduation. Her parents, sisters, and partner—who is an Air Force officer pursuing a PhD via SAASS in military history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—will come to Cambridge, travelling from Idaho, California, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., for the big event. 

After graduating, Yadlin will work for Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. That work will involve looking at future force design and anticipating needs, challenges, and objectives in the years ahead so that the Air Force is prepared to meet long-term goals. And, at some point in the future, Yadlin will return to SAASS to teach, coming full circle.

With her PhD wrapping up, Yadlin reflects on her time at HKS, the ways in which it has contributed to her journey of service, and the fact that her three years in Cambridge has been the longest continual stretch for her in one place in a long while.  

“That’s military life,” Yadlin says, “In the Air Force we say, ‘flexibility is the key to air power.’” 

Portraits by Natalie Montaner; inline images courtesy of Roni Yadlin