Mentor Background

What is your area of expertise?

Are you interested in mentoring high school or college students, or both?

How did you become interested in this area?

I first became interested in nuclear weapons policy in college while writing a paper on Iran. It was Spring 2015, just as negotiations for the JCPOA were really heating up. I was fascinated by all of it, what nuclear weapons were, how security interests impacted a decision to pursue the technology and how other countries work together to prevent further proliferation.

What was your career path to get here?

After discovering this interest and trying out some development internships, I literally Googled “Arms Control Internships, DC” and applied to everything I saw. Once I got a taste of the field, I knew this is what I wanted to do and spent my senior year just looking at tall the DC organizations for openings. Serendipitously, the Center for Arms Control (where I interned) had an opening soon after I graduated. I learned a lot at the Center and was fortunate enough to start with a colleague I met at a nerdy nuke happy hour and she became one of my best friends. That public education work led me to Girl Security, something I am fortunate enough to continue while at graduate school. 

Why should the public care?

Everyone should care about them, they impact us all equally and despite the weird vocabulary surrounding nuclear weapons, each person can —and should — participate in the debate. 

What is a current issue or trend that concerns you?

The general disregard for multilateral cooperation, something we have seen with the JCPOA and INF but also outside nuke world with climate issues. If we cannot work together, we are bound to start competing with one another again, which is unsustainable and unnecessary in this point of time.