Hollie McKay

Why organisations work with Hollie McKay

• She has reported from inside Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran’s borderlands, and Myanmar, and stayed in Kabul through and after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Her geopolitical analysis is built on direct access to actors most analysts only read about.
• Her work documenting ISIS atrocities against the Yazidi has been used as evidentiary material in war-crimes proceedings. That standard of source verification carries directly into how she briefs corporate audiences on risk.
• As Research Director at GlobalStrat Ltd., she leads conflict analysis and threat forecasting for a Washington D.C. geopolitical risk firm. Her commentary appears in The Cipher Brief and the Wall Street Journal.
• Author of Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield, with a foreword by Jocko Willink, and the photo-led volume on the fall of Afghanistan with Jake Simkin. Both books work as primary-source material for executives trying to understand asymmetric threats.
• She is a 40 Under 40 Honoree of the Middle East Policy Council and a 2022 Media Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, two credentials that signal recognition from serious foreign-policy institutions, not media bureaus.

Biography highlights

• Investigative and international affairs correspondent for Fox News Digital for more than fourteen years, covering Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Latin America.
• Research Director, GlobalStrat Ltd., Washington D.C., leading geopolitical risk, conflict analysis, and threat forecasting.
• Contributing writer at The Cipher Brief on nuclear deterrence, regional conflict, and state security.
• Author of Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield (Di Angelo Publications, 2021) and Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule (Di Angelo Publications, 2022).
• 40 Under 40 Honoree, Middle East Policy Council; 2022 Media Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
• Honorary board member, EMERGENCY USA; human rights and cultural consultant to Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019).

Biography

Geopolitical risk has moved from an annual board paper to a live operating variable. Most of what reaches the boardroom is filtered through several analytical layers before it gets there. Hollie McKay’s work sits at the other end of that chain.

For more than fourteen years at Fox News Digital, she reported as an investigative and international affairs correspondent across Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. She embedded with US and allied forces, interviewed captured ISIS fighters, and documented sexual-violence cases against the Yazidi at the evidentiary standard used in war-crimes proceedings. When the Taliban returned to Kabul in 2021, she stayed.

That body of work is now the foundation for her current role as Research Director at GlobalStrat Ltd., the Washington D.C. geopolitical risk firm where she leads conflict analysis and threat forecasting. Her commentary appears in The Cipher Brief on nuclear deterrence, Iran, and state security, and in the Wall Street Journal. Her two books, Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield and Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule, are primary-source documents on how violent non-state actors behave once they hold ground.

For corporate audiences, the value is specific. She translates situations most executives only read about, sanctions regimes, supply-chain choke points, the operational reality of doing business in fractured states, into briefings grounded in named actors and verifiable events. The 40 Under 40 honour from the Middle East Policy Council and the 2022 Media Fellowship at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies are markers of credibility inside the foreign-policy institutions that serious organisations rely on.

Key speaking topics

• Geopolitical risk and conflict forecasting
• Terrorism, insurgency, and the behaviour of violent non-state actors
• Afghanistan after the US withdrawal and Taliban rule
• The war in Ukraine and Russia’s strategic posture
• Iran, the Middle East, and nuclear deterrence
• War crimes, accountability, and post-conflict justice
• Reporting and truth-telling under hostile-regime pressure

Ideal for

• Boards and risk committees with exposure to Middle East, Eastern Europe, or Central Asia operations
• Chief Security Officers, Heads of Geopolitical Risk, and General Counsel scoping country-level threat
• Defence, energy, and extractives leadership teams with personnel or assets in fragile states
• Strategy and corporate affairs functions briefing executive committees on sanctions and political risk

Audience outcomes

• A grounded read on how the fracturing rules-based order is reshaping country-level risk, drawn from direct reporting rather than secondary analysis
• Specific case material on Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, and ISIS that audiences can apply to their own exposure mapping
• A clearer picture of how violent non-state actors, sanctioned regimes, and intelligence services actually operate, and what that means for corporate decision-making
• Sharper questions to put to internal risk and security functions after the session