Experts

Bonnie Jenkins

Fast Facts

  • Under secretary of state for arms control and international security (2021-2024)
  • Special envoy for cooperative threat reduction programs (2009-2017)
  • Founder, executive director, and board chair of Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (2017-2021)
  • Expertise on arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction, New START, global health security, climate change, nuclear energy 

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • War and Terrorism
  • Law and Justice

As the under secretary of state for arms control and international security from 2021 to 2024, Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins oversaw three bureaus: Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability; International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN); and Political-Military Affairs. In May 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken named Jenkins, the first African American to serve as an under secretary of state, as the department’s lead on implementation of AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Jenkins served as special envoy for cooperative threat reduction programs in the ISN bureau from July 2009 until January 2017. She coordinated U.S. government efforts alongside international programs that prevent non-state actors from developing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. She was the State Department’s lead for the President’s Nuclear Security Summits and the U.S. representative to the G7 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, and she led diplomatic efforts to promote the Global Health Security Agenda. She was the 2016 ISN nominee for the Secretary of State’s Award for Excellence. 

From its inception in 2017 until April 2021, Jenkins was the founder, executive director, and board chair of Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security. From 2005 to 2009, she was the program officer for U.S. foreign and security policy at the Ford Foundation. She also served as counsel on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission).

Jenkins was a legal adviser to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. She has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, George Washington University, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Minnesota. Jenkins designed and led arms control simulations at Stanford University.

Jenkins was a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University and worked at Harvard Law School in the Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest. 

Jenkins earned a PhD from the University of Virginia (where she previously worked at the Miller Center), an LLM from the Georgetown University Law Center, an MPA from the State University of New York at Albany, a JD from Albany Law School, and a BA from Amherst College. She is a member of the New York State Bar. 

Jenkins is a retired U.S. Naval Reserve officer. She is also an honorary Delta Sigma Theta sorority member.