2022 Annual Meeting Speakers and Panelists

Eric Brewer
Brewer is a senior director for Nuclear Materials Security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, with a focus on proliferation risks relating to Iran and North Korea. Previously he was a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and from 2017 to 2018 was director for counterproliferation at the National Security Council (NSC).

Shannon Bugos
Bugos joined ACA in 2019 and her work focuses on bilateral and multilateral nuclear arms control and disarmament, missile defense, and nuclear modernization, and she coordinates ACA’s Arms Control Tomorrow project on emerging military technologies and strategic stability. Previously she was communications manager at the Truman National Security Project.

Thomas Countryman
Countryman served for 35 years as a member of the U.S. Foreign Service until 2017. In 2011, he became assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation and in 2016 he was also appointed as acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. He was elected to serve as ACA’s board chair in 2017 and is currently on leave while he serves in a consulting role with the U.S. Department of State.

Kelsey Davenport
Davenport is the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, where she focuses on the nuclear and missile programs in Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan and on international efforts to prevent proliferation and nuclear terrorism. She first joined ACA in 2011 as a Herbert Scoville Peace Fellow.

Denise Duffield
Duffield joined PSR-LA in 2004 as the Director of Development and became Associate Director in 2008. She directs the Nuclear Threats program, which advocates for nuclear weapons abolition and policies that prevent exposure to radioactive waste and contamination. She also leads PSR-LA’s participation in Back from the Brink, a national grassroots campaign that brings communities together to abolish nuclear weapons.

Carol Giacomo
Giacomo became chief editor of Arms Control Today in 2021 after serving as a member of The New York Times editorial board from 2007 to 2020 and working as a diplomatic correspondent for Reuters.

Daryl G. Kimball
For three decades, Kimball has been a leader in nongovernmental research and policy advocacy for arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament beginning in 1989 as a Scoville Peace Fellow and later as director of security programs at Physicians for Social Responsibility, then leading the 17-organization Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, before being appointed as ACA executive director in 2001.

Michael Klare
Klare is a senior visiting fellow at ACA focusing on emerging technologies and how arms control strategies can mitigate their adverse impacts. He is a regular contributor for The Nation magazine and served as the Five Colleges Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College until his recent retirement. He has served on ACA’s Board of Directors since the 1990s.

Jamie Kwong
Kwong is a Stanton pre-doctoral fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on public opinion of nuclear weapons issues and multilateral regimes including the P5 Process, the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Oliver Meier
Meier currently coordinates the 24-member U.S.-German-Russian Deep Cuts Commission, which is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office. Previously, he was deputy head of the International Security Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, an advisor for a senior member of the German Bundestag, and an international representative for ACA.

Senator Jeff Merkley
Merkley has represented Oregon in the Senate since 2009 and sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He consistently stands as one of the Senate’s top leaders on foreign affairs issues and is co-chair of the bicameral Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group. During his career in government, Merkley also worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and then the Congressional Budget Office, where he analyzed nuclear weapons policies and programs.

Zia Mian
Mian is a physicist and co-director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, where he also directs the Program’s Project on Peace and Security in South Asia. He is co-editor of Science & Global Security, the international technical journal of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament, and co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM). He received the 2014 Linus Pauling Legacy Award and the 2019 American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Award, and was appointed to the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters as of January 2022.

Izumi Nakamitsu
Nakamitsu has served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs since 2017. She previously served as Assistant Administrator of the Crisis Response Unit at the United Nations Development Programme.

Lindsay Rand
Rand is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a graduate research assistant at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. Rand’s research is focused on the intersection of science and policy in the field of international security. Her research focuses on policy options for engaging different stakeholders on issues relating to emerging/disruptive technologies and innovative options for future arms control agreements.

Joan Rohlfing
Rohlfing became president and chief operating officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in January 2010, after nine years as NTI’s senior vice president for programs and operations. Before joining NTI, she held senior positions with the U.S. Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration, including as senior advisor for national security to the Secretary of Energy.

Victoria Samson
Samson is the Washington office director for Secure World Foundation and has twenty years of experience in military space and security issues. She has served as a Senior Analyst for the Center for Defense Information (CDI) and was the Senior Policy Associate at the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. She is also a member of the Space Security Working Group of the National Academies of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC).

Mallory Stewart
Stewart joined AVC in 2022, after serving as senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the NSC since January 2021. Previously she was senior manager at the Center for Global Security and Cooperation in Sandia National Laboratories, and was deputy assistant secretary at AVC, and served as an attorney in the Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser, beginning in 2002. She was the lead lawyer on the negotiations that led to the 2013 U.S.-Russian Framework for the Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons.

Nina Tannenwald
Tannenwald’s research focuses on the role of international institutions, norms and ideas in global security issues, efforts to control weapons of mass destruction, and human rights and the laws of war. Her book, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 was awarded the 2009 Lepgold Prize for best book in international relations.

Elayne Whyte
Whyte has served in multiple diplomatic roles for the government of Costa Rica over her long career, including as ambassador to the UN in Geneva successfully presiding over the 2017 multilateral negotiations on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. She has also chaired conferences of states parties on the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the Mine Ban Treaty.

Christine Wing
Wing has served on ACA’s Board since 2007 and is also the treasurer. She was a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at NYU, where her research concerned the role of multilateral institutions in reducing the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. Earlier, she served as the program officer for International Peace and Security at the Ford Foundation overseeing funding concerning weapons of mass destruction in the emerging security environment, and intrastate and regional conflict. She is currently an independent consultant.