Our Board - Women In International Security

Pamela Aall

Pamela Aall is a Senior Advisor for conflict prevention and management at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). Before this, she was founding Provost of the Institute’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding.

Pamela has also worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, the European Cultural Foundation, and the International Council for Educational Development. In 2014, she was named the Sharkey Scholar at Seton Hall University. Pamela serves as Chairperson of the Board of Directors for the International Peace & Security Institute.

Pamela’s research interests include mediation, non-official organizations, civil-military relations, education and training, and education’s role in exacerbating conflict or promoting reconciliation.

Pamela has co-authored and co-edited several books, most recently Rewiring Regional Security in a Fragmented World (2011) and Managing Conflict in a World Adrift (2015) with Chester Crocker and Fen Hampson.

Secretary

Chantal de Jonge Oudraat

Chantal de Jonge Oudraat served as the President of WIIS from January 2013 – to July 2021. She currently serves as a Fellow at the Wilson Center, focusing on men, masculinities, and international security.

Her research focuses on women, peace and security, gender, international organizations, arms control and disarmament, terrorism and countering violent extremism, peacekeeping, use of force, economic sanctions, and U.S.-European relations.

Previously, Chantal held the roles of Executive Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) North America; Senior Advisor to the U.S. Institute of Peace Center for Gender and Peacebuilding; Associate Vice President and Director, U.S. Institute of Peace (Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program); Adjunct Associate Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; and Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. She has also held senior positions at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, and Geneva’s United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

Chantal did her undergraduate studies at the University of Amsterdam and received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Paris II (Panthéon). She is a Dutch and US national.

Chantal has authored and co-edited several publications, including most recently A Gender Framework for Arms Control and Disarmament (WIIS, 2021), The Gender and Security Agenda: Strategies for the 21st Century (Routledge, 2020), and Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century (USIP Press, 2011).

Treasurer

Virginia Haufler

Virginia Haufler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is affiliated with the Center for International Development and Conflict Management.

Her research focuses on the changing nature of governance in the global political economy, especially the role of transnational corporations and corporate social responsibility. Her current study examines how international regulation of the private sector addresses conflict and corruption issues.

From 2011-to 2021, Virginia restructured and directed the Global Communities Living-Learning Program, introducing first-year students to scholarship and experiences exploring globalization, global issues, and intercultural understanding. She has been a visiting scholar at University College London, University of California-Irvine, the University of Southern California, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has an M.A./Ph.D from Cornell University and a dual B.A. from Pennsylvania State University.

Virginia has authored and co-edited several books, most recently A Public Role for the Private Sector: Industry Self-Regulation in a Global Economy (2001), Private Authority and International Affairs (1999), and Dangerous Commerce: State and Market in the International Risks Insurance Regime (1997).

Board Member

Hilary Anderson

Hilary Anderson joined the staff of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) at the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2009, where she works as a Senior Gender Advisor, guiding the organization on key women’s rights and gender equality issues in Latin America. Here, she has led the development of knowledge and capacity-building tools to support closing the gap between the international legal framework on women’s rights and national-level laws and policies. Previously, she has worked with the Pan American Health Organization’s Gender and Health Unit and with the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW, now part of UN Women). Hilary is a Canadian national and bilingual in English and Spanish.

Board Member

Nadia Crevecoeur

Nadia Crevecoeur is an International Development Consultant at Deloitte Consulting LLP. Most recently, she was the Senior Program Assistant at Women in International Security (WIIS), where she assisted in developing and monitoring their programmatic activities across 25 chapters globally. Nadia also has experience working with the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office in the special victim’s unit. In addition to her programmatic experience, Nadia researched western Islamic radicalization at the School for International Training in Geneva, Switzerland. While in Brussels, Belgium, she researched measuring UN peacekeeping success with the Global Governance Institute.

Board Member

Min Kyriannis

Min Kyriannis joins WIIS global after serving as the co-president of WIIS NY and chair of WIIS Global’s Future of Technology and Gender project. Min Kyriannis, who launched Amyna Systems, has 25+ years of experience working in industries involving enterprise and converged systems, information technology, operational technology, cybersecurity, physical security, and risk management across the globe. She is a recognized technology leader and has held roles on the client, the consultant, and now the manufacturing side, applying the experiences to adopt a holistic view of technology and security across all technology systems. She was the co-host of “Security IQ with Min and Elisa,” an innovative series providing a different perspective in the security industry, and co-founded the Global Cyber Consortium. Ms. Kyriannis was ranked as one of the top 20 Cybersecurity Professionals in IFSec’s Global Influencers Security & Fire 2020 and was named Security Industry Association’s (SIA) 2020 Jay Haughn Winner. She previously served as the Chair of SIA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Board and now serves as a member of the Advisory Board for Security Specifiers and the Curious Minds Dive Foundation.

Board Member

Alistair Millar

Alistair Iain Millar is the President of the Fourth Freedom Forum, a private operating foundation focused on peace and security issues. He is also an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Alistair has been a proud member of WIIS since 2016 and he has worked on peace security issues and served on boards for over thirty years. He has written books, chapters, articles, and reports on a wide range of issues that are relevant to the work that WIIS is doing including the Women Peace and Security Agenda, preventing violent extremism, human rights, and the rule of law, and the nexus between security and development.

In 2004 he founded Global Center on Cooperative Security and was the Executive Director for over a decade and later served on its Board of Directors. He has also lectured at Johns Hopkins University, where he received the Excellence in Teaching Award for Advanced Academic Programs; and Alistair has taught courses at the University of Maryland, at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Diplomatic Academy, and at the European Union in Brussels and its many of its Missions in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Board Member

Marguerite Benson

Marguerite Benson is a national security-focused analyst, consultant, and tech startup investor. She advises technology startups, investment groups, and corporate clients on geopolitical risk, strategy and analysis, and engagement with the US government. Marguerite is co-founder of an angel investment group composed of McKinsey & Company alumni and advisor to a data analytics startup and a new Venture Capital firm focused on innovation in support of U.S. national security. At McKinsey, she supported national security clients on strategy development and execution, organizational change, and emerging technologies. Marguerite spent more than a decade in the U.S. federal government, primarily at the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense. As a U.S. Fulbright Fellow, she researched Polish-Ukrainian relations and the role of Russian influence.

Board Member

Naureen Chowdhury Fink

Naureen Chowdhury Fink is the Executive Director at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). Prior to this, she was the Executive Director at The Soufan Center, and before that, a senior policy adviser on counterterrorism and sanctions at the U.K. Mission to the United Nations, leading related negotiations in the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. She has previously worked at the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and UN Women.

Before joining the United Nations, she was head of research and analysis for the Global Center on Cooperative Security, leading the multilateral security portfolio on the international response to terrorism and violent extremism, armed conflict, and political instability, and the role of international and regional actors. This built on her earlier work at the International Peace Institute, where she developed the portfolio on counterterrorism and transnational security threats and was an active contributor to the IPI Global Observatory.  

She has developed and implemented multi-stakeholder CT and PCVE projects across the globe, in regions as diverse as West Africa, Europe, and South Asia, and published widely on counterterrorism, gender, sanctions, international security, and the UN. She is a regular speaker at international high-level events, in the media, and at conferences bringing together policymakers, civil society, academia, and the private sector.

Board Member

Ellen Bomasang

Ellen Bomasang is a global development professional whose focus has been inclusive growth, clean energy, and climate across emerging economies in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East for over 25 years. She has led global teams in the delivery of professional services and is a recognized thought leader in energy and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI). Her project work spans energy access, innovative finance, planning, policy and regulatory reform, private sector engagement, and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI). In the energy and GESI space, she has led assessments, capacity strengthening, and the design and implementation of activities in the areas of women’s economic empowerment, women’s leadership, male allyship, youth engagement, policy, and workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion. Throughout her career, she has been recognized as an effective mentor and a results-oriented leader. Ellen has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy.