Kelsey Hartigan

Kelsey Hartigan is the deputy director of the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) and a senior fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In this role, she is responsible for managing the country’s preeminent national program for developing the next generation of nuclear experts. Prior to joining CSIS, Hartigan was dual-hatted as a faculty associate at the Naval Postgraduate School and a senior adviser to the director of the U.S. Special Operations Command Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. From 2016 to 2019, she served as a policy adviser on North Korea, weapons of mass destruction crisis response planning, and nuclear proliferation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy. Before joining the Department of Defense, Hartigan was a senior program officer at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and a nonproliferation and defense analyst at the National Security Network. She has also held positions with the International Security and Nuclear Weapons Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center and the U.S. Department of State's Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland. Hartigan holds an MA from Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she focused on technology and national security, and a BA from Purdue University.