The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is pleased to announce Christine Parthemore as its new Chief Executive Officer.
Christine has deep experience addressing issues ranging from the security implications of climate change to countering weapons of mass destruction, including in the U.S. Department of Defense, security think tanks, and academia. She is also Director of CSR’s Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons and Manager of CSR’s Climate-Nuclear-Security Project, and was a founding Board Member of CSR.
Christine has also been an adjunct professor in the Global Security Studies program at Johns Hopkins University since 2010. There she designed and teaches courses on Energy & Environmental Security and Climate Change & National Security. As she nears a decade of this work, she has taught hundreds of students, almost all of whom are mid-career national security professionals. Many continue to serve at the Pentagon, at the State Department, in the intelligence community, on Capitol Hill, in DC’s embassies, and in the media.
In 2016, Christine was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in Tokyo, where she researched Japan’s approach to international civil nuclear cooperation. Prior, she served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs in the U.S. Department of Defense, an office that managed more than $3 billion per year in research and development, acquisition, treaty compliance, and international partnership programs in addition to directing the Nuclear Weapons Council. Her countering-weapons of mass destruction work spanned from projects to eliminate chemical weapons to biosecurity capacity-building programs with partner countries. It included a multi-year effort leading to the international mission to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and collaboration with international partners on all-hazards emergency preparedness and global health security.
Christine has worked at various think tanks, including as a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where she worked on one of the first programs dedicated to analysis of the security implications of climate change. She has contributed to two best-selling nonfiction books, testified before Congress, spoken at the United Nations, authored or coauthored dozens of written works, and lectured at universities in the United States, Vietnam, and China. She holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Georgetown.
The CSR team believes that Christine’s leadership arrives at a crucial moment in time for those concerned about governance and security, and we couldn’t be more excited about both the vision and practical insight she brings to the table.
The prior CEOs and Co-Founders of CSR, Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, will be moving into the role of “Directors of Research,” where they will oversee all of CSR’s impactful research and analysis efforts, including at the Center for Climate and Security, the Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons and the Converging Risks Lab.