Upcoming Speakers
Ambassador Nathaniel Fick
December 11, 2023
Topic: U.S. Leadership in Shaping the Future of Tech Diplomacy
Nathaniel C. Fick was sworn in on September 21, 2022 as the inaugural U.S. Ambassador at Large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy.
Prior to joining the State Department, Ambassador Fick was a technology executive and entrepreneur. He was CEO of the cybersecurity software company Endgame from 2012 through its acquisition by Elastic in 2019. Thereafter, he led Elastic’s information security business globally. Ambassador Fick spent nearly a decade as an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, working with management teams to build technology businesses. In 2018, he was named by Fast Company magazine as one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and Endgame was selected by Forbes as one of the “100 Best Cloud Companies in the World.”
From 2009 to 2012, Ambassador Fick was CEO of the Center for a New American Security, a national security research organization in Washington. Earlier in his career, he served as a Marine Corps infantry and reconnaissance officer, including combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. His book about that experience, One Bullet Away, was a New York Times bestseller, a Washington Post “Best Book of the Year,” and one of the Military Times‘s “Best Military Books of the Decade.”
Ambassador Fick graduated with high honors in Classics from Dartmouth College and holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Ambassador Ronald Lehman
January 8, 2024
Topic: Technology and the End of the Cold War -- and the End of the End of the Cold War
The Honorable Ronald F. Lehman II is the Counselor to the Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). For many years, he was the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at LLNL.
Ambassador Lehman has been the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy in the Department of Defense, Ambassador and Chief Negotiator on Strategic Offensive Arms (START I), and Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He has also served on the National Security Council staff as a Senior Director, in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary, on the Senior Professional Staff of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, and served in Vietnam as a commissioned officer in the United States Army. In the past he has served as the Chair of the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee (TRAC), on the Presidential Advisory Board on Proliferation Policy, on the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board, as chair of the NATO High Level Group, on the governing board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and as a U.S. representative to a number of United Nations disarmament and review conferences.
Ambassador Lehman co-chaired (with David Franz) the National Academy of Sciences’ study on the future of Cooperative Threat Reduction and formerly co-chaired (with Ash Carter) the Policy Advisory Group on nonproliferation for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was on the Defense Science Board Task Forces on Globalization and Security, on Tritium, on Global Strike, and on Defense against Biological Weapons. He is served on the National Research Council Committee on U.S. Air Force Strategic Deterrence Military Capabilities in the 21st Century and served on the National Research Council’s Committee on Science, Technology, and Health Aspects of the Foreign Policy Agenda of the United States and on its Committee on Alternative Technologies to Replace Anti-Personnel Landmines. He was detailed to the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration as counterterrorism coordinator after the September 11, 2001, attacks. For the Department of Energy he was the U.S.-Snezhinsk Working Group Co-Chair for the Joint Russian-American Steering Committee on the Nuclear Cities Initiative. He served on the advisory panel for USSTRATCOM’s Global Innovation and Strategy Center. He was on the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on the U.S. Nuclear Posture. He was a Public Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.
He received his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University (1975) and his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College (1968).