Gloria Duffy
Gloria Charmian Duffy (born September 4, 1953) is a former U.S. Department of Defense official and a nonprofit executive. She has been the president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club of California since 1996. [1] From 2010 - 2017 she led the acquisition, financing, design, entitlements and construction of the Club's first headquarters building, at 110 The Embarcadero in San Francisco. The grand opening for the Club's new building took place on September 12, 2017.[2] The building received a 2016 California Heritage Council award for historic preservation. [3]
Early life and education
Duffy attended public schools in Lafayette, California, and began working in her family's real estate and land development office while a student at M. H. Stanley Middle School in 1965. She graduated from Acalanes High School in 1971. She was the editor of the school newspaper, The Blueprint. She also co-founded the Lafayette Youth Services Commission Duffy holds a 1975 A.B. degree magna cum laude from Occidental College in Los Angeles, where her General Studies track was Science and Human Values, she was a College Scholar and she was co-editor-in-chief of The Occidental Weekly, the campus newspaper. She holds a doctorate, an M. Phil and an M.A. in political science, from Columbia University in New York, where she was a Presidents' Fellow and served as research assistant to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski prior to his appointment as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. She also held a Hubert H. Humphery Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, from the US Department of State. She was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from the University of San Francisco in 2006.
Career
Duffy has had a varied career, including research, journalism, education, business, management, scientific collaboration and research funding, philanthropy, public service at the local and national levels, defense and arms control policy, international arms negotiations, ranching and real estate management and development. She has served as the CEO of three organizations for a total of 32 years.
Dismantling WMD in the Former Soviet Union
She served as deputy assistant secretary of defense, under Defense Secretaries Les Aspin and William Perry and Assistant Secretary Ashton Carter, in the Clinton Administration, and was responsible for negotiating the dismantlement and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.[4] She completed over fifty agreements with these countries for dismantling and disposal of their weapons of mass destruction, managing a $400 million annual budget, and received the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service in 1995. In May 2016, the 25th anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar legislation, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter presented Dr. Duffy and four other individuals with inaugural Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Awards, at a ceremony at the Pentagon.[5][6]
Civilian Research and Development Foundation
In 1995, while at the Defense Department, Duffy responded to a request from the White House to fund a newly created organization, the Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF Global), providing the initial $5 million for its budget from Defense Department funds, which was then matched by philanthropist George Soros.[7] Its creation, through the U.S. National Science Foundation, was mandated by the U.S. Congress, led by the late House Science and Technology Committee Chairman George Brown. The initial purpose was to provide employment in civilian scientific research to former Soviet WMD scientists who were unemployed or underemployed, and whose skills might be in demand by countries or groups seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
After leaving the U.S. government, Duffy served on, then chaired, the Board of Directors of the CRDF. She served on the Board from 1996–2009, and chaired the Board for ten years, from 1998 until 2008. During this time, the organization grew to raise and spend nearly $300 million in government and private funds, and expanded its operations worldwide. Currently, CRDF Global is a major funder for collaborative scientific research between American scientists and colleagues in other countries. It provides alternative employment for weapons scientists, promotes scientific collaboration on global problems like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, helps emerging countries to develop science and technology based economies, and helps the U.S. to form scientific links in other countries.[8]
Ploughshares Fund
In 1982, Duffy become the first executive director of a start-up organisation, Ploughshares Fund, a public foundation initiated by San Francisco philanthropist Sally Lilienthal. Ploughshares Fund provides grants to individuals and institutions working to diminish the threats of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. She served as executive director, 1982–1984, and has served on both the Board of Directors and Advisory Board of Ploughshares Fund. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board.
Conflict Resolution
Duffy has served as a mediator and in conflict resolution initiatives including a 1998 effort working with the national security advisors to the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to reduce hostility among the three countries. In 1997, as President of the Guadalupe River Park and Gardens Corporation in San Jose, she brought together environmental activists and public agencies at odds over environmental mitigation of a flood control project on the Guadalupe River, helping lead to a resolution of the issues and forward progress in the flood control project and creating the Guadalupe River Park.[9]
Trusteeships, Professional Committees, Advisory Boards
Duffy has served as the Chair, President, Trustee, Director and Advisory Board member of some two dozen organizations nationally and locally in the Bay Area. These include the Boards of Directors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Chicago and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility in Palo Alto, California. She served as President of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, and served on the Board of Directors of Los Gatos Community Hospital. She has been a Trustee of Occidental College in Los Angeles since 2006, and serves on its Executive Committee. She has chaired the College's Academic Affairs Committee and co-chaired the Board's Student Life and Enrollment Management Committee. She served on the Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee of Dominican University of California, in San Rafael, California.
She served for 20 years on the International Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Advisory Board of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA. She has served on the Science, Arms Control and International Security Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and on the selection committee for the Science and Technology Policy Fellows program.
Dr. Duffy was for seven years a board member and Treasurer of the Compton Foundation, where she oversaw the management of $120 million in assets. She has been a member of or chaired committees funding grants, fellowships and scholarships for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, the Truman Scholarships (the national memorial to President Truman), the University of California system, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a number of other organizations.
She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Silicon Valley Capital Club.
Writing
Duffy is the author or editor of a number of books and articles, including the textbook Blacker and Duffy, International Arms Control Issues and Agreements, Stanford University Press, 1984 and Duffy, et al. Compliance and the Future of Arms Control, Ballinger, 1988. She writes a column, InSight, for The Commonwealth magazine, as well as op-ed pieces for The Huffington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
Honors and awards
Duffy is a recipient of the Janet Gray Hayes Award, in honor of San Jose's first woman mayor[10]; a Character Award from the Silicon Valley Monterey Bay Boy Scout Council; A Woman of Achievement Award for Public Service from the San Jose Mercury News and the Women's Foundation, and a Human Relations Award from Santa Clara County. She has been recognized over many years as a leader in business and management by the San Francisco Business Times, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the Alameda County Commission on the Status of Women.
Personal life and business activities
She is married to Rod Diridon, Sr., former Chair of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and a leader in transportation policy and the development of public transportation systems regionally, nationally and internationally. They have two children and four grandchildren. In 2018, Duffy marks 52 years of responsibilities in her family real estate and land development business. She has also been a limited partner in a dozen non-family real estate projects.
References
- ↑ "Commonwealth Club: Gloria Duffy". commonwealthclub.org. Retrieved 2010-01-30.
- ↑ http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Commonwealth-Club-moves-into-new-home-12193006.php
- ↑ http://www.californiaheritagecouncil.org/
- ↑ http://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/684118/remarks-on-securing-the-oceans-the-internet-and-space-protecting-the-domains-th
- ↑ https://www.dvidshub.net/video/462822/carter-commemorates-25th-anniversary-nunn-lugar-legislation#.VzInl3omduM
- ↑ http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/755216/carter-threat-reduction-program-was-novel-response-to-historic-change
- ↑ https://clintonwhitehouse2.archives.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/html/996_10_2.html
- ↑ https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2005/10/17/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E2085-2
- ↑ https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=ggulrev
- ↑ https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/03/06/pizarroex-jackpot-winner-honored-by-college/