History

Building on the belief that women strengthen national security
LCWINS was founded in 2019 by a small group of women who believed diverse leadership teams yield better national security outcomes.  Years of being “the only woman in the room” led them to formalize their efforts to advance gender parity in national security and foreign policy leadership.

Our work began with a series of projects to support a more diverse and inclusive presidential transition.  In our earliest days we:

• Successfully encouraged 18 bipartisan presidential candidates in 2020 to publicly commit to gender parity in their national security appointments;
• Built a database of nearly 1,000 well-qualified women ready to serve in senior politically appointed positions and shared their profiles with the Biden-Harris Transition Team and Presidential Personnel Office to facilitate consideration of more gender-inclusive slates.
• Published a white paper recommending process improvements to support Transition Teams and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel become more inclusive of women; and
• Held a series of webinars to help highly experienced women navigate the political appointment and Senate confirmation processes.

These early programs highlighted the ample opportunity to strengthen American foreign and national security policymaking and demonstrated the numbers of women capable of serving at the highest levels of defense and diplomacy leadership.

Today, LCWINS continues this work through programs that build a bipartisan network of support for women’s leadership ascension and success.