Jillian Burns: Transnational Security Jillian Burns joined the Foreign Service in 1993 and spent most of her career as a political officer working on the Middle East, particularly on Iran. Prior to retiring in November 2014, she served as the Director of the Near East Affairs Office in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). She served as Consul and Senior Civilian Representative in Herat, Afghanistan from September 2012 – September 2013. For the first half of 2012, Ms. Burns did a detail assignment outside of the State Department, during which time she was the first National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Iran at the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which falls under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

From 2008-2011, Ms. Burns worked in the Office of Policy Planning, where she was responsible for issues relating to Iran and also served six months as Acting Director of the Iran office in the Bureau of Near East Affairs (NEA). Ms. Burns previously served in the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, first as head of the political/economic section and Iran watcher, then as the first director of the Iran Regional Presence Office, opened in 2006. Prior to that, she served in NEA on the Syria desk and on the Iran desk and worked as a Watch Officer and Senior Watch Officer in the State Department Operations Center. She served as a Political Officer and a Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan and started her Foreign Service career as a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Poland.

Ms. Burns received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from Davidson College and her Master of Arts in Journalism & Mass Communication from the University of Georgia. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she taught communications at Georgia Southern University.

Michele Clark: Global Gender Issues

Michele Clark is an internationally recognized expert on combating trafficking in human beings. She is currently an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs. In 2011, she received the Morton A. Bender Teaching Award for Outstanding Teaching. Previously, she served as the Director of the Anti-Trafficking Unit at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and in Vienna, Austria, where she was responsible for assisting 56 member countries in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Before moving to Vienna, she was the Co-Director of the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International

Studies, a human rights organization dedicated to eliminating human trafficking. She is also the co-founder and CEO of Third Space Creative, an education technology company with a social conscience specializing in developing innovative web-based solutions to meet global training and education needs.

Benjamin Friedman: Defense Analysis

Benjamin H. Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of expertise include counter-terrorism, homeland security and defense politics. He is the author of dozens of op-eds and journal articles and co-editor of two books, including Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It, and U.S. Military Innovation since the Cold War: Creation Without Destruction. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and an affiliate of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gavin Helf: International Development

Gavin Helf is currently a Senior Democracy and Governance Advisor at USAID in the Asia/ Middle East bureaus covering Central and South Asia. He has been closely involved in the USAID response to the 2010 Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. Gavin worked at USAID/Iraq, managing and helping design and procure much of the COIN and democracy and governance portfolio there. He studied, lived and worked in the USSR and its successor states, and was a democracy and governance advisor at USAID/Armenia. Prior, Gavin was Director of Grant Programs for the Eurasia Foundation and was the Central Asia Regional Director for the International Research & Exchanges Board based in Almaty. Gavin has taught Russian and Soviet foreign policy and comparative politics at Notre Dame, Cornell and Moscow's International University and worked for Radio

Liberty as a Soviet area research specialist in the late 1980s. He received in Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley in 1994.

Mark R. Jacobson: Transnational Security

Dr. Mark R. Jacobson is the Special Assistant to the Secretary of the United States Navy, Ray Mabus. In this role, Jacobson serves as a coordinator and guide on sensitive issues and matters of direct interest and concern to the SECNAV. A member of the Navy’s Senior Executive Service since 2014, Jacobson’s role includes working with senior Navy leadership as a liaison within DoD and to outside groups such as Congress, the media, and other external audiences such as industry, Military Service Organizations, academia, and think-tanks.

Previously, Jacobson taught at The George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs and was a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States. He has served in

executive positions in government on several occasions, most recently in Kabul, Afghanistan from 2009-2011 as the Deputy Political Advisor to the ISAF Commander General Stanley McChrystal and later as the first Deputy NATO Senior Civilian Representative, Afghanistan (DSCR-A). In this capacity Jacobson was also a principal foreign policy advisor to COMISAF General David Petraeus and worked closely with the international community to find solutions to diplomatic crises that could derail the comprehensive campaign in support of the Government of Afghanistan. Jacobson also served on the staff of the Senate Armed Services from 2007-2009 and from 2003-2005 taught courses on U.S. counterterrorism policy while the Visiting Scholar for International Security and Public Policy at the Mershon Center. Jacobson began his government service in 1998 as a Presidential Management Fellow, serving in various civilian roles at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff to include at the Joint Staff Current Operations Directorate (J-33) Special Operations Division and as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy). As a result of his efforts during this time, he was nominated and became a finalist for the Partnership for Public Service’s first Service to America Award in 2002. Jacobson is also ardent supporter of the next generation of public policy professionals and is actively involved in non-profit and university mentoring programs.

Jacobson’s 20 years of military service includes eight years enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve as a Psychological Operations Specialist. In 2001 he was commissioned as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is trained as a Defense attaché and strategic debriefer and has mobilized in support of NATO and U.S. military operations including mobilizations for Operation Joint Endeavor (1996) and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan (2006) where he conducted a variety of U.S. and NATO Special Operations missions.

Jacobson is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress and his commentary appears in national and international print media such as Foreign Policy and The Daily Beast. His regular television and radio appearances include CNN’s Crossfire, and The Situation Room, MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Up with Steve Kornacki, and Hardball, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, FOX’s Kelly Files and The O’Reilly Factor. Jacobson is a life-Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Advisor to the Truman National Security Project. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Jacobson holds a B.A. in history a Masters from the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London and earned his Ph.D. in Military History and Strategic Studies from The Ohio State University.

Marcus D. King: Energy and Environment

Marcus D. King is John O. Rankin Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Elliott School's Master of Arts in International Affairs Program. King previously served as the Elliott School’s Director of Research and Associate Research Professor. Dr. King joined the Elliott School from the CNA Corporation (Center for Naval Analyses), where he served as Project Director and Research Analyst on topics including global climate change and national security, state stability, adaptation to climate change, and Defense Department energy policy. Previously, Dr. King served as a globalization planning fellow and special assistant in Georgetown University's Office of the President, as the research director of the Sustainable Energy Institute, and as a consultant focused on nuclear energy policy, nonproliferation and climate change. During the Clinton

Administration, Dr. King held Presidential appointments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he represented the United States in multilateral environmental negotiations including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service; and the Office of the Secretary of Energy where he represented the United States in negotiations with the Russian Federation and directly supported the Deputy Secretary.

Christopher A. Kojm: U.S. Foreign Policy & Global Interests

Christopher A. Kojm re-joined the Elliott School in Fall 2014 as Visiting Professor of the Practice of International Affairs after serving as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2009 to 2014. He was previously the Elliott School’s director of the mid-career MIPP program from 2008 to 2009 as well as the director of the U.S. Foreign Policy Summer Program (USFPSP) from 2007 to 2008. He also taught at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School (2004-07) and at Georgetown University (2005). In government, Chris served as a staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1984-98 under Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of

Intelligence and Research (1998-2003), and as deputy director of the 9/11 Commission (2003-04). He was also president of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, the Commission’s follow-on public education organization (2004-05). He also served as a Senior Advisor to the Iraq Study Group (2006). He received a master’s degree in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School in 1979.

Rollie Lal: International Political Economy

Rollie Lal is a consultant researching the international economy and energy markets, and provides international security expertise to U.S. government agencies on organized crime, religious extremism, China, South Asia, and other areas. Previously Dr. Lal was Associate Professor at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, a program for military and civilian senior officials from 38 countries. She taught courses on a variety of topics including

socio-economics, the private sector, organized crime, national identity, and good governance. Prior to that, Dr. Lal was Assistant Professor at the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Gent, Belgium and St. Petersburg, Russia, where she taught MBA courses on international business management and risk analysis courses on doing business in China, India, Russia, the US, and the EU. From 2002-06 Dr. Lal was a political scientist at RAND, where she performed research and analysis on a wide spectrum of economic and security issues in South and East Asia, North Africa, and Iran. She is the author of books on international security and economics, including Understanding China and India, Central Asia and Its Asian Neighbors, Iran's Political, Demographic, and Economic Vulnerabilities, and The Muslim World After 9/11. She served as a correspondent for the Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun in the 1990s, and has published articles in other newspapers including The Financial Times and The New York Times. Dr. Lal received her Ph.D. in International Relations and her M.A. in Strategic Studies and International Economics from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Larry Niksch: Asian Security

Larry Niksch was born in Gary, Indiana. He received his B.A. degree from Butler University with a history major. At Butler, he became a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity. He received a Master of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University and a Ph.D degree in history from Georgetown University.Dr. Niksch retired from the Congressional Research Service in February 2010 after more than 43 years as a Specialist in Asian Affairs. At CRS, he provided information and

conducted research for Members of Congress and congressional committees on security and political issues related to U.S. relations with the countries of East Asia and the Western Pacific. During that time and afterwards, he has authored many private papers and articles on these issues and participated in numerous conferences in the United States, East Asia, and Europe. In 1986, he served as a U.S. presidential election observer in the Philippines during the Philippine presidential election of that year.

With his retirement, Dr. Niksch has been named a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is involved in CSIS’s Asia programs. Dr. Niksch also is a fellow with the Institute for Corean-American Studies (ICAS). He has taught East Asian History at George Washington University and taught a graduate course in East Asian Security during the 2014-2015 academic year.

Dr. Niksch is married to Mary Anne Niksch, who teaches piano. Their daughter, Alisa Niksch, is a practicing physician.

Rebecca Patterson: Transnational Security

Rebecca Patterson, PhD, is an advisor in the Office of Peacekeeping, Sanctions, and Counterterrorism in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs at the State Department. An active duty LTC in the U.S. Army, her military specialty is Strategic Plans and Policy. Prior to her assignment at the State Department, she served as an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Curriculum and Faculty Development at the National Defense University (NDU). From 2011-2012, Dr. Patterson was a Strategic Advisor in the Commander’s Initiatives Group, Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan. From 2010-2011, she was a Council on Foreign

Relations International Affairs Fellow. During this fellowship, she split her time between the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group.

Patterson’s recently published book is titled The Challenges of Nation-Building: Implementing Effective Innovation in the U.S. Army from World War II to the Iraq War (Rowman & Littlefield). Her previous military assignments include: Deputy, Director's Initiatives Group, Department of the Army Office of Business Transformation (2010), Staff Officer, Department of the Army Office of Institutional Adaptation (2009), economic advisor to the 1st Armored Division (MND-N) while deployed to Iraq (2008), command of an Army mechanized engineer unit in South Korea (2001-2003), platoon leader and executive officer at Fort Lewis, Washington where she supervised construction projects in Thailand (1997), Texas (1998) where she worked with Joint Task Force and the United States Border Patrol, and New York (1999) where she worked with the New York Police Department, and the Corps of Engineers.

She holds a PhD from The George Washington University in National Security Policy, a M.S. in Engineering Management from University of Missouri-Rolla; and a B.S. in Economics from the United States Military Academy at West Point. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an Aspen Institute Scholar.

Mara Rudman: U.S. Foreign Policy & Global Interests

A founder and principal at Quorum Strategies, Mara Rudman has years of experience in government and the private sector. She serves concurrently as a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. She recently taught a national security seminar at Dartmouth College. Previously, she served as Assistant Administrator for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Prior to this appointment by President Obama, Rudman was a deputy envoy and chief of staff for the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle

East Peace at the State Department. She also served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary to the National Security Council under President Obama from January through May 2009. In President Clinton’s administration, Rudman served at the National Security Council as Deputy Assistant the President for National Security Affairs and Chief of Staff, among other positions, where she coordinated and directed activities within the National Security Council and among the various federal departments and agencies with defense and foreign policy responsibilities, and in that capacity, played a role on Middle East peace efforts. In addition, she has been a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, focusing on national security issues, with a particular focus on the Middle East. Rudman also has worked as a vice president and general counsel for The Cohen Group, a Washington-based consultancy founded by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Earlier in her career, Ms. Rudman was chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, working for Chairman Lee Hamilton. Prior to her committee positions, Rudman was a litigation associate at Hogan & Hartson. Before her time at Hogan, Rudman clerked for the Honorable Stanley Marcus, now of the Eleventh Circuit, in the Southern District of Florida. Rudman served on the board of advisors of the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, the Middle East Investment Initiative, and as a member of the Aspen Institute Middle East Strategy Group. She is also an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow. She has been a frequent media commentator, appearing on CNN, FOX, BBC, NPR, and in print media. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College summa cum laude and her Juris Doctorate cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Kim Thachuk: Transnational Security

Dr. Thachuk is a senior analyst focusing on transnational issues in the Intelligence Community. Among other positions, she served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for Transnational Issues at the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive. For over a decade she was a senior research professor and policy analyst directing projects on transnational threats in the Department of Defense. She has been an educator in the post-secondary academic system for over 25 years serving as a professor in universities ranging from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, both in Canada, to the National Defense University, the Interamerican Defense College, the George Washington University, and George Mason University in the Washington D.C. area where she directed and taught in the Transnational

Threats Concentrations. Her research focuses on transnational threats to national security, including organized crime and terrorism, human, drug, and arms trafficking, and environmental and health threats. She has published various scholarly articles, as well as a book entitled, Transnational Threats: Smuggling and Trafficking in Arms, Drugs and Human Life (Praeger, 2007).

Lynne Weil: Communications and Public Diplomacy

Lynne Weil is a seasoned international affairs and communications professional. Arriving in Washington just before 9/11, her public service path has taken her from press secretary of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to communications director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee -- for a total of nearly nine years on Capitol Hill -- to the Executive Branch, where she spent two years working in public diplomacy with the Department of State and two as Director of Communications and External Affairs for the Broadcasting Board of Governors. She left the BBG in 2014 to become Public Affairs Director for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a non-profit that educates Americans on the importance of diplomacy and development and advocates for more robust federal funding. Before entering public service, Ms. Weil was a journalist for domestic and international media,

including NPR, The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In nearly nine years as a foreign correspondent, she lived in Germany and Italy and traveled throughout Europe. Ms. Weil earned a Master’s in Public Policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Lawrence Woocher: Conflict Prevention

Lawrence Woocher is Atrocity Prevention Fellow working with the Human Rights Division of USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy,

Human Rights, and Governance. He is contributing to USAID’s work on the comprehensive U.S. government strategy to prevent and respond to mass atrocities, announced by President Obama in April 2012. Lawrence has been working on early warning, conflict prevention, and the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities for

more than a decade. Prior to his Democracy Fellowship, he was Research Director of the Political Instability Task Force at Science

Applications International Corporation (SAIC). From 2006-2011, he was a Senior Program Officer at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). While at USIP, he was a member of the executive committee and lead expert on early warning for the Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Before joining USIP, Lawrence was a Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for International Conflict Resolution and, concurrently, a consultant on early warning to the Office of the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide. Lawrence has an MA in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School and a BA in Neuroscience from Brown University.