Elaine Cuilla Kamarck is an American lecturer in public policy as well as Senior Fellow and Founding Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at The Brookings Institution.

In the 1980s, she was one of the founders of the New Democrat movement which helped to elect Bill Clinton president. She served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, where she managed the Clinton Administration's National performance review also known as reinventing government.

Elaine came to the Kennedy School of Government in 1997 after a career in politics and government. At the Kennedy School she served as Director of Visions of Governance for the Twenty-First Century and as Faculty Advisor to the Innovations in American Government Awards Program. In 2000, she took a leave of absence to work as Senior Policy Advisor to the Gore presidential campaign.

She currently conducts research on 21st century government, homeland defense, the role of the Internet in political campaigns, governmental reform and innovation, and intelligence reorganization.

Kamarck received her PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. She previously attended Bryn Mawr College.