Four years ago, a group of prominent female foreign policy and national security officials who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations met regularly for lunch to lament the lack of women in senior government positions. The meetings, described by one of the attendees as ‘kvetch’ sessions, led to the creation of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security in 2019. It wasn’t long before many of the group’s goals began to be realized. Joe Biden made diversity a key election promise, picked Kamala Harris as his vice president, and women now make up 60% of the White House staff and a similar proportion of the president’s agency appointees. One of the leading voices in that fight, Tamara Cofman Wittes, was nominated on Monday for a senior post on Middle East affairs.