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?

Found the nuclear policy space to have the most interesting, consequential problems to solve to me. Highly respected senior political leaders I worked closely with on congressional issues, so I thought I should try policy out. Also, I wanted a job where I could conduct actual consequential diplomacy.

What was your career path to get here?

Law school -> PMF program -> legislative affairs on national security issues-> arms control bureau at the State Department from 2015-2018, and finally think tank research.

Why should the public care?

Nuclear war is a low probability, high consequence event, and the US can't enjoy superpower status and the relative domestic tranquility that came with it for much longer. There will be repetitive debates for the next several years over how much money to spend on nukes, whether there is a safer way to deal with nuclear threats than pure deterrence, and how current lackadaisical approaches (from the 90s to today) on nuclear issues will impact future generations.

What is a current issue or trend that concerns you?

No more old style arms control, no serious, official thinking on how to adapt arms control for future threats.