James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is the vice president of Heritage's Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the E. W. Richardson Fellow.

His recent research has focused on developing the national security required to secure the long-term interests of the United States -- protecting the public, providing for economic growth and preserving civil liberties.  As an expert on foreign affairs, defense, intelligence and homeland security, Carafano has written extensively on these issues, and testified many times before Congress.

Carafano, a 25-year Army veteran with a master’s and doctorate from Georgetown University, joined Heritage in 2003 as a senior research fellow in homeland security and missile defense.

A graduate of West Point, Carafano holds a master's degree and a doctorate from Georgetown University as well as a master's degree in strategy from the U.S. Army War College.

He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and serves as a visiting professor at National Defense University.

He is a regular guest analyst for the major U.S. network and cable television news organizations, from ABC to Fox to MSNBC to PBS, as well as such outlets as National Public Radio, Voice of America and the History Channel. He has also appeared on numerous international news programs.

Carafano’s op-ed columns and commentary are published widely, including the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today and Washington Times in addition to Forbes.

Thomas Carothers is senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In that capacity he oversees all of the research programs at Carnegie.  He also directs the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program and carries out research and writing on democracy-related issues.

Carothers is a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He has worked on democracy assistance projects for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on aid efforts around the world.

He is the author or editor of ten critically acclaimed books and many articles in prominent journals and newspapers, including most recently, Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization (Brookings Press, 2019, co-edited with Andrew O'Donohue). He has been a visiting faculty member at the Central European University in Budapest, Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Prior to joining the Endowment, Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney adviser in the office of the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State.

Lise Grande is the president and CEO of the U.S. Institute Peace, an independent, nonpartisan, federally funded institute charged with the mission to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict around the world. She has 25 years of continuous overseas experience leading, managing, and coordinating complex operations for the United Nations. Ms. Grande has held leadership positions in humanitarian, stabilization, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and development operations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caucasus.

Prior to joining USIP, Ms. Grande served as the head of U.N. humanitarian and development operations in Yemen, where she coordinated one of the U.N.’s largest operations globally. Prior to her assignment in Yemen, Ms. Grande was responsible for the U.N.’s humanitarian, stabilization, and development operations, and she served as deputy head of the U.N.’s political mission in Iraq during the campaign against ISIS. She was instrumental in facilitating one of the largest managed evacuations of civilians from a war zone in recent history and led the U.N. team that helped stabilize more than 20 cities liberated from ISIS control.

Ms. Grande was responsible for the U.N.’s humanitarian and development work in South Sudan in the lead-up to independence and during the first year of statehood. She has headed U.N. operations in India and Armenia and served in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, East Timor, the Palestinian Territories, Tajikistan, Sudan, and Haiti.

Ms. Grande has an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a master's from the New School for Social Research, and she is the subject of a documentary on state-building in South Sudan. She assumed her role as president and CEO of USIP on December 1, 2020.

Former Ambassador Gordon Gray is the chief operating officer at American Progress. He was previously the executive vice president at the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce and the deputy commandant at the National War College. Gray served as the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia from 2009 until 2012, witnessing the start of the Arab Spring and directing the U.S. response in support of Tunisia’s transition.

He was senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2008 until 2009, focusing on governance and infrastructure in the southern provinces. Before that, Gray was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2005 until 2008; his responsibilities included the promotion of U.S. interests in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, as well as oversight of the bureau’s Regional Affairs office. His other foreign assignments included Egypt, where he served as deputy chief of mission from 2002 until 2005; Canada; Jordan; Pakistan; and Morocco, where he began his career in government as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Gray received his B.A. from Yale and his M.A. from Columbia, as well as an honorary M.S. from the National Defense University.

Stephen Hadley, chair, completed four years as the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs on January 20, 2009. In that capacity he was the principal White House foreign policy adviser to then President George W. Bush, directed the National Security Council staff, and ran the interagency national security policy development and execution process.

From January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2005, Hadley was the assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, serving under then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. In addition to covering the full range of national security issues, he had special responsibilities in several specific areas including U.S. relations with Russia, the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, developing a strategic relationship with India and ballistic missile defense.

From 1993 to 2001, Hadley was both a partner in the Washington D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner (now part of Goodwin Proctor) and a principal in The Scowcroft Group (a strategic consulting firm headed by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft). In his law practice, Hadley was administrative partner of the firm. He represented a range of corporate clients in transactional matters and in certain of the international aspects of their business – including export controls, foreign investment in U.S. national security companies, and the national security responsibilities of U.S. information technology companies. In his consulting practice, Hadley represented U.S. corporate clients seeking to invest and do business overseas.

From 1989 to 1993, Hadley served as the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Hadley represented the Defense Department on arms control matters, including negotiations with the Soviet Union and then Russia, on matters involving NATO and Western Europe, on ballistic missile defense, and on export and technology control matters.

Prior to this position, Hadley alternated between government service and law practice with Shea & Gardner. He was counsel to the Tower Commission in 1987, as it investigated U.S. arms sales to Iran, and served on the National Security Council under President Ford from 1974 to 1977.

During his professional career, Hadley has served on a number of corporate and advisory boards, including: the National Security Advisory Panel to the Director of Central Intelligence, the Department of Defense Policy Board, the Board of Directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, as a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as a trustee of ANSER (Analytical Services, Inc.), a public service research corporation.

Hadley graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1969. In 1972, he received his juris doctor degree from Yale Law School, where he was Note and Comment editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Michelle J. Howard served 35 years in the United States Navy. She led Sailors and Marines multiple times in her career as the Commander of a ship, an Expeditionary Strike Group, Task Force, and a Naval theater. Her last command was from 2016 to 2017 as U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa. She simultaneously led NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples with oversight of missions from the Western Balkans to Iraq. Operations in her career include: NATO peacekeeping, West African Training Cruise, Indonesia Tsunami Relief operations, and the rescue of Maersk Alabama from Somali Pirates. Michelle J. Howard is a Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran.

Fred Kempe is the president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. Under his leadership since 2007, the Council has achieved historic, industry-leading growth in size and influence, expanding its work through regional centers spanning the globe and through centers focused on topics ranging from international security and energy to global trade and next generation mentorship.

Before joining the Council, Kempe was a prize-winning editor and reporter at the Wall Street Journal for more than twenty-five years. In New York, he served as assistant managing editor, International, and columnist. Prior to that, he was the longest-serving editor and associate publisher ever of the Wall Street Journal Europe, running the global Wall Street Journal’s editorial operations in Europe and the Middle East.

In 2002, The European Voice, a leading publication following EU affairs, selected Kempe as one of the fifty most influential Europeans, and as one of the four leading journalists in Europe. At the Wall Street Journal, he served as a roving correspondent based out of London; as a Vienna Bureau chief covering Eastern Europe and East-West Affairs; as chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington, DC; and as the paper’s first Berlin Bureau chief following the unification of Germany and collapse of the Soviet Union.

As a reporter, he covered events including the rise of Solidarity in Poland and the growing Eastern European resistance to Soviet rule; the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia and his summit meetings with President Ronald Reagan; the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon in the 1980s; and the American invasion of Panama. He also covered the unification of Germany and the collapse of Soviet Communism.
He is the author of four books. The most recent, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth, was a New York Times Best Seller and a National Best Seller. Published in 2011, it has subsequently been translated into thirteen different languages.

Kempe is a graduate of the University of Utah and has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he was a member of the International Fellows program in the School of International Affairs. He won the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s top alumni achievement award and the University of Utah’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy.

For his commitment to strengthening the transatlantic alliance, Kempe has been decorated by the Presidents of Poland and Germany and by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

George E. Moose, vice chairman, was a career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, where he attained the rank of career ambassador. His service with the U.S. State Department included assignments in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Europe. He held appointments as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Benin (1983-86) and to the Republic of Senegal (1988-91).

From 1991 to 1992, he was U.S. alternate representative to the United Nations Security Council. In 1993, he was appointed assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, a position he occupied until August 1997. From 1998 to 2001, he was U.S. permanent representative to the European Office of the United Nations in Geneva. In June 2007, he was appointed by the White House to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, where he now serves as vice chair. He also serves on the boards of Search for Common Ground, the Atlantic Council and Elderhostel.

Since 2003, he has been adjunct professor of practice at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Moose has a bachelor's degree in American studies from Grinnell College, which also awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws. He is married to Judith Kaufmann, a former member of the U.S. Foreign Service and a currently a consultant on international health diplomacy.

Robert C. O'Brien serves as the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

O'Brien previously served as the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. As SPEHA, O'Brien held the personal rank of Ambassador. With the Secretary of State, O'Brien led the U.S. Government's diplomatic efforts on overseas hostage-related matters. He worked closely with the families of American hostages and advised the senior leadership of the U.S. Government on hostage issues. O'Brien coordinated with the interagency Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell on the development and implementation of U.S. hostage recovery policy and strategy.

O'Brien served as Co-Chairman of the U.S. Department of State Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan under both Secretaries Rice and Clinton. The PPJRA promoted the rule of law by training Afghan judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers and provided scholarships for young Afghan lawyers to study in the United States.

O'Brien was also a presidentially-appointed member of the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee, which advises the federal government on issues relating to the trafficking of antiquities and other cultural items.

In 2005, O'Brien was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a U.S. Representative to the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Earlier in his career, O'Brien served as a Senior Legal Officer for the UN Security Council commission that decided claims against Iraq arising out of the first Gulf War. O'Brien was a Major in the Judge Advocate General's Corps in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Prior to joining the Administration, O'Brien co-founded Larson O'Brien LLP in Los Angeles, a nationally recognized litigation firm. His law practice focused on complex litigation and international arbitration. In addition to his client work, O'Brien has served as an arbitrator in over 20 international and domestic proceedings and he was appointed by the federal courts to serve as a special master in numerous complex cases.

O'Brien is a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). He received his B.A. degree in political science, cum laude, from UCLA.

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to 2009, Rice served as the sixty-sixth secretary of state of the United States, the second woman and first African American woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security adviser) from January 2001 to 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during time which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As provost, she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and an academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students. In 1997, she also served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender--Integrated Training in the Military.

From 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff, serving as director; senior director of Soviet and East European Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as special assistant to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

As a professor of political science, Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors: the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

She has authored and coauthored numerous books, including two best sellers, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011) and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010). She also wrote To Build a Better World (2019) with Philip Zelikow; Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (2018) with Amy Zegart; Democracy: Stories From the Long Road to Freedom (2017); Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin; and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).

In 1991, Rice cofounded the Center for a New Generation (CNG), an innovative, after-school academic enrichment program for students in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California. In 1996, CNG merged with the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula (an affiliate club of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America). CNG has since expanded to local BGCA chapters in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Dallas. She remains an active proponent of an extended learning day through after- school programs. 

Since 2009, Rice has served as a founding partner at RiceHadleyGates, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The firm works with senior executives of major companies to implement strategic plans and expand in emerging markets. Other partners include former national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and former secretary of defense Robert M. Gates.

Rice currently serves on the board of Dropbox, an online-storage technology company; C3, an energy software company; and Makena Capital, a private endowment firm. In addition, she is a member of the boards of the George W. Bush Institute, the Commonwealth Club, the Aspen Institute, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Previously, Rice served on various additional boards, including those of KiOR, Inc.; the Chevron Corporation; the Charles Schwab Corporation; the Transamerica Corporation; the Hewlett-Packard Company; the University of Notre Dame; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors.

In 2013, Rice was appointed to the College Football Playoff Committee, formerly the Bowl Championship Series.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master's from the University of Notre Dame; and her PhD from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

Rice is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates. She currently resides in Stanford, California.

Kori Schake is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Before joining AEI, Dr. Schake was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, National Defense University, and the University of Maryland.

Dr. Schake is the author of five books, among them “America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?” (Penguin Random House Australia, Lowy Institute, 2018); “Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony” (Harvard University Press, 2017); “State of Disrepair: Fixing the Culture and Practices of the State Department” (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); and “Managing American Hegemony: Essays on Power in a Time of Dominance” (Hoover Institution Press, 2009).

She is also the coeditor, along with former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, of “Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military” (Hoover Institution Press, 2016).

Dr. Schake has been widely published in policy journals and the popular press, including in CNN.com, Foreign Affairs, Politico, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and War on the Rocks.

Dr. Schake has a PhD and MA in government and politics from the University of Maryland, as well as an MPM from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. Her BA in international relations is from Stanford University.

Jake Sullivan is the National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden. Formerly, he served as a senior policy adviser on the Biden for President campaign. In the Obama-Biden Administration, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to then-Vice President Biden. He previously served as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During his time in government, Sullivan was a lead negotiator in the initial talks that paved the way for the Iran nuclear deal and played a key role in the U.S.-brokered negotiations that led to a ceasefire in Gaza in 2012. He also played a key role in shaping the Asia-Pacific rebalance strategy at both the State Department and the White House.

In the years following his service in the Obama-Biden administration, Sullivan was a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he helped conceive and design a bipartisan task force project on a foreign policy for the middle class.  He also held teaching posts at Yale Law School, Dartmouth College, and the University of New Hampshire.  He co-founded and co-chaired the advisory board for National Security Action, a nonprofit national security advocacy organization, and served on the advisory boards of a number of organizations involved in foreign policy and national security. Sullivan was also a senior policy adviser on the Hillary for America presidential campaign in 2016.

He holds a B.A. in political science and international studies from Yale College; a M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He grew up as the second of five children in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a proud product of the Minneapolis public schools.

Kenneth R. Weinstein is the Walter P. Stern Distinguished Fellow at Hudson Institute.

From 2011 through 2020, Dr. Weinstein served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson. In December 2019, he became the inaugural holder of the Walter P. Stern Chair. He joined the Institute in 1991, was appointed CEO in June 2005, and was named president and CEO in March 2011.

A political theorist by training whose academic work focused on the early Enlightenment, Dr. Weinstein has established a reputation as a go-to influencer and thought leader for policy and opinion leaders in the U.S. and around the world on a range of matters. He has written widely on international affairs for publications in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and the Yomiuri Shimbun. In 2006, he was decorated with a knighthood in arts and letters by the government of France and serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Europe.

From 2017 until 2020, Dr. Weinstein chaired the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the oversight body for U.S. Agency for Global Media, and was chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting and the Open Technology Fund. He previously was a member of the National Humanities Council, the governing body of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He is often interviewed by major broadcast and cable outlets around the world, and speaks French and German. A frequent guest on French television and radio, he has served as in-studio commentator for live French-language coverage of U.S. congressional and presidential elections since 1996.

He is the co-editor of The Essential Herman Kahn: In Defense of Thinking (Lexington Books, 2009).

Dr. Weinstein serves on the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations, which provides counsel on trade agreements to the United States Trade Representative. In March 2020, he was nominated by President Trump to serve as U.S. ambassador to Japan.

Dr. Weinstein earned his B.A. in general studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, D.E.A. in Soviet and Eastern European studies from Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, and Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.