New Leadership For WIIS Executive Board

Women In International Security Press Release

For Immediate Release            
Contact: Jolynn Shoemaker, WIIS/202.687.3366
September 4, 2007

Washington, DC – Laura S. H. Holgate has been elected as President of the Women In International Security Executive Board. She will take over for Pamela Aall, who has served in the position for the past four years. Ms. Holgate’s term will begin in September of 2007. She joined the Executive Board in 1998, and has supported WIIS activities actively throughout her terms on the Board.

Ms. Holgate is the Vice President for Russia/New Independent States Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). NTI is a public charity devoted to reducing toward zero the risk that nuclear, biological or chemical weapons will ever be used and to preventing their proliferation. Founded in January 2001 by philanthropist Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn, NTI has established a solid record of threat reduction achievements based on action and analysis.

Prior to joining NTI, Ms. Holgate directed the Department of Energy’s Office of Fissile Materials Disposition from August 1998 to January 2001, where she was responsible for consolidating and disposing of excess weapons plutonium and highly enriched uranium in the U.S. and Russia, a key nonproliferation goal. She served as Special Coordinator for Cooperative Threat Reduction at the Department for Defense from August 1995 through August 1998, where she provided policy oversight of the “Nunn-Lugar” Cooperative Threat Reduction program of U.S. assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states in eliminating the weapons-of-mass-destruction legacy of the Cold War. Ms. Holgate served for two years as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. She spent six months at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), working on the Clinton Transition Team and as Special Assistant to the Acting Director of ACDA.

The leadership and staff of Women In International Security are pleased to welcome Ms. Holgate into her new role, and we are looking forward to her leadership in the coming years.

WIIS is the premier non-profit, non-partisan membership organization dedicated to increasing the influence of women in foreign and defense affairs by raising their numbers and visibility, while enhancing dialogue on international security issues. WIIS offers a comprehensive set of programs designed to foster and promote women in all fields related to international security, and in a variety of sectors. WIIS is a part of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. For more info, visit http://wiis.georgetown.edu/.