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NTI Officials Move Into Senior Obama Administration Positions; New Communications, Operations and Bio Officials Join the Non-Profit

NTI Officials Move Into Senior Obama Administration Positions;
New Communications, Operations and Bio Officials Join the Non-Profit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Three top Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) officials have moved into senior-level positions in the Obama administration, and four leaders in communications, health security, and strategic planning and operations have joined the NTI team.

Laura Holgate, NTI’s Vice President for Russia and New Independent States for eight years, is serving as Senior Director for WMD Terrorism and Threat Reduction at the National Security Council. In that role, she will coordinate policies and programs related to reducing global threats associated with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, including the potential for terrorist use of such weapons, for the White House. Before joining NTI in 2001, Holgate managed the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at the Department of Defense and served as Director of the Office of Fissile Materials Disposition at the Department of Energy.

Dr. Margaret (Peggy) Hamburg is the new Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and previously served as NTI’s Vice President for Biological Programs and then senior scientist for NTI’s Global Health and Security Initiative. Before joining NTI in 2001, she was Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Brooke Anderson is Chief of Staff and Counselor at the United States Mission to the United Nations. Anderson joined NTI in 2001 as Vice President for Communications. Previously, she served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Communications at the National Security Council and as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Public Affairs.

NTI is pleased to announce that Dr. David Heymann, formerly Assistant Director General for Health Security and Environment at the World Health Organization, will be NTI’s new Special Advisor for Health Security. Dr. Heymann recently assumed the position of Chairman of the Board of the UK Health Protection Agency.

Joining the organization and replacing Anderson is Mark Kitchens, Chief Communications Officer. Kitchens served as Senior Vice President for Communications.Kitchens served as Senior Vice President for Communications and Strategy at AARP. A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kitchens has also held several political positions including Deputy Press Secretary for National Security for Senator John Kerry’s 2004 Presidential Campaign and Assistant Press Secretary for President William J. Clinton. Kitchens was recently named PR Week’s 40 Under 40 top communications professionals.

Also joining the communications team is Bryan Wilkes, who moved into the role of Director of Programs and Outreach after spending six and a half years as Director of Public Affairs at the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration. Prior to NNSA, he worked more than ten years in government, most of which was spent in the U.S. Congress as Communications Director, Senior Policy Advisor and Press Secretary for members of the Senate and House of Representatives.

NTI is also pleased to announce that Deborah Rosenblum will be joining NTI as Senior Director for Strategic Plans and Operations. Rosenblum joins NTI from The Cohen Group, an international strategic consulting group, where she served as Vice President, responsible for assisting corporations with strategic planning. Previously, Rosenblum served as a career Senior Executive in The Office of the Secretary of Defense for 14 years with policy, programmatic and operational responsibility for such issue areas as strategic nuclear forces, counter-proliferation policy, and homeland defense.

NTI Co-Chairman and CEO Sam Nunn said: “While I am sorry to lose such talented experts as Laura Holgate, Peggy Hamburg and Brooke Anderson, I believe that our nation will benefit greatly from their service and am pleased that they will continue to work to strengthen U.S. national security and public health.”

NTI is a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. NTI is governed by an international Board of Directors with members from 10 countries and is co-chaired by philanthropist Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn. NTI’s activities are directed by Senator Nunn and NTI President Charles Curtis. For more information, please visit www.nti.org.

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