Dr. Elizabeth Kolmstetter is a nationally recognized Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, SIOP Fellow, and National Academy of Public Administration Fellow whose career has focused on applying rigorous assessment science to high-stakes federal hiring, selection, and talent systems. Across more than three decades and nine federal agencies, she has designed, validated, defended, and modernized assessment and selection systems in mission-critical environments, including law enforcement, national security, intelligence, international development, space exploration, and cybersecurity. She has served in senior executive roles at CISA, NASA, ODNI, CIA, USAID, TSA, and OMB, advancing competency models, hiring flexibilities, leadership assessment, workforce planning, and future-ready talent systems.
Dr. Kolmstetter was the FBI’s first I-O Psychologist, where she implemented a new Special Agent Selection System and validated selection systems for Hostage Rescue Team operators, SWAT team members, intelligence analysts, and supervisory special agents. After 9/11, she helped stand up the Transportation Security Administration, leading the assessment and hiring system for the largest civilian workforce mobilization in U.S. history: processing more than 2 million applicants, testing over 340,000 candidates, and hiring more than 55,000 security screeners at 430 airports in under one year. That work received SIOP’s M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace.
Today, she is an independent consultant and is also serving as a Workforce Futures Fellow with Democracy Forward, she leads the Reimagining Federal Hiring initiative to design evidence-based, modern hiring reforms for the future federal workforce. Her contributions to applied I-O psychology have just been recognized with SIOP’s 2026 Distinguished Professional Practice Contributions Award.
