Dr. Sims is currently Director of Intelligence Studies and a Visiting Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. She serves as a Presidential appointee on the US Public Interest Declassification Board, which oversees the declassification policies of the USG. Dr. Sims is also a consultant on intelligence and homeland security for private corporations and the US government. Dr. Sims has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence Coordination (1994-1998) and Intelligence Advisor to the Under Secretary for Management and Coordinator for Intelligence Resources and Planning at the US Department of State (1998-2001). In the latter position, she helped coordinate the State Department budget and programs with other federal agencies involved in national security. Dr. Sims has also been a Professional Staff Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1991-1994), and a legislative assistant to Senator John Danforth on foreign and defense policy (1990-1993). Prior to government service, Dr. Sims was the U.S. Coordinator of the multinational Nuclear History Program (1988-1990), taught as a Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (2001-2003), and served as a research associate with both the L’Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI) in Milan and the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) in London.

In 1998, Dr. Sims received the intelligence community's highest civilian award, the National Distinguished Service Medal.

Dr. Sims received her MA and PhD from Johns Hopkins University SAIS and her BA from Oberlin College. She has co-edited with Burton Gerber, Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Georgetown University Press, 2005) and Vaults Mirrors and Masks: Rediscovering US Counterintelligence (Georgetown University Press 2009). She has published numerous articles on intelligence theory and reform. Her publications on defense technology and arms control include Icarus Restrained: an Intellectual History of Nuclear Arms Control in the United States from 1945 to 1960, (Westview Press 1985), and “The American Approach to Nuclear Arms Control: A Retrospective,” Daedalus (Winter, 1991). Current research interests include intelligence support to counter-terrorism, counter proliferation and homeland security; the application of advanced technologies to intelligence missions; Civil War intelligence; intelligence theory.