For Immediate Release
February 5, 2018
Contact: Jim Baird, [email protected]; 202.478.3413
The Stimson Center announced today that Rachel Stohl has been appointed Managing Director. Stohl joins the management team and will oversee the strategic direction of the Center’s growing “Promoting Security and Prosperity” portfolio of programming around the world, including the Trade, Technology, and Security program; and WMD, Nonproliferation, and Security program. She will continue to direct the Stimson Center’s Conventional Defense program.
“Rachel has distinguished herself as one of the leading analysts and strategic thinkers in the field of security,” said Stimson Center President and CEO, Brian Finlay. “Her insights and expertise have not only strengthened Stimson’s programmatic reputation, she has played a key role in the Center’s growing influence with national governments around the globe. Rachel has built a career as a policy disrupter, challenging the status quo and forcing pragmatic change. The Board of Directors and I could not be more pleased to welcome Rachel as a partner on the management team at Stimson.”
Stohl joined the Stimson Center in 2011 and founded the Conventional Defense program that addresses issues relating to the international arms trade — including drones, small arms and light weapons, and children in armed conflict. Stohl’s work has garnered international praise and recognition — her work on U.S. drone policy was recognized by Prospect magazine in 2016 for its innovation and impact on policy.
“The world faces tremendous challenges that threaten security and prosperity around the globe,” said Rachel Stohl. “It’s a privilege to work with Brian and Stimson’s talented team to effectively confront these transnational threats. Together we’ll create new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration that turn good ideas into great ones — and generate nonpartisan, pragmatic policies that work to make ours a more secure world.”
Prior to joining Stimson, Stohl was an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, from 2009-2011. Stohl was the consultant to the U.N. ATT process from 2010-2013 and was previously the consultant to the U.N. Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on the Arms Trade Treaty in 2008 and the U.N. Register for Conventional Arms in 2009. She was a Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. from 1998-2009.
Stohl has been a consultant for a variety of international organizations, including Oxfam, Project Ploughshares, SIPRI, the Small Arms Survey, and World Vision. She served as a Scoville Fellow at the British American Security Information Council in D.C. and worked at the United Nations Center for Disarmament Affairs in New York and at the Program for Arms Control, Disarmament, and Conversion in Monterey, CA.
Stohl has been an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, and holds an M.A. in international policy studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and an honors B.A. in political science and German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Stimson Center is a nonpartisan policy research center working to solve the world’s greatest threats to security and prosperity.