NTI Welcomes Chief Development Officer and New Staff to Biosecurity and International Fuel Cycle Strategies Programs

The
Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is pleased to announce the addition of several
new staff members: Peggy Knudson as chief
development officer; Richard Johnson
as a senior director of NTI’s International Fuel Cycle Strategies Program; and Jake Jordan and Hayley Severance as senior director and senior program officer
respectively of Global Biological Policy and Programs.

“We
are delighted to welcome these new members to the NTI team,” said NTI President
Joan Rohlfing. “Peggy’s development background will be crucial to sustaining NTI’s
efforts to build a safer world, and the addition of Richard, Jake and Hayley to
our fuel cycle and global health security programs will be critical as we ramp
up our work in these areas.”

Knudson
brings more than 20 years of experience in fundraising and grant making to NTI,
including at the Brookings Institution, where she was director of development
for foreign policy, at the Center for American Progress and at ecoAmerica. She opened
and led the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States
after the fall of the Berlin Wall and later served as executive director of
Women in International Security.

Johnson,
who previously served as deputy lead coordinator (acting) for Iran nuclear
implementation at the U.S. Department of State, will join NTI in June as senior
director for fuel cycle and verification. Previously,
he was
Director for Nonproliferation at the National Security Council in the Obama
Administration. Johnson has held
numerous positions at the Department of State and has been involved deeply in
both the Iran and North Korea nuclear issues.

Previously,
Jordan was a chief scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked as the
senior science and technology advisor to the office director and deputy
director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Biological
Technologies Office.  There he assisted
strategy and planning for a research and development portfolio of emerging
biotechnologies impacting national security, including infectious disease and
pandemic prevention. 

Severance
previously served as a senior policy advisor in the Office of the Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction,
where she developed strategic policy guidance for the Cooperative Threat
Reduction’s Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) and led the
Department’s efforts to advance the U.S. commitment under the Global Health
Security Agenda.

For
more information on NTI’s work, please visit www.nti.org.