Sharing this space with us today and also to begin, i would like to thank our cosponsors, the gender equality and initiative affairs and the studies program, the National Securities program and the g. W. Military and veteran services for making in event possible. Thank you for your support. I would lining to begin this like to begin this event by saying is it is on the record and questions at the end are welcomed so today our conversation will center on the role of little and of in National Security and the role of women in National Security and interNational Security and ican think of no one more qualified to share her thoughts on this topic than secretary christine wormuth. Please allow me to share some of her career highlights. She is the 24th secretary of the army. She was worn in on may 27, 2021 following her nomination by President Biden and her confirmation by the United States senate. As the civilian leader of it have United States army, secretary wormuthover sees the services 1 5 billion budgets and is responsible for decisions in one million active guards and reserve soldiers. Secretary wormuth has worked on defense and National Security policy for over 25 years as a career civilian and as a president ial pointee. Prior to her current role, she was the director of the International Defense and security accelerate at the rand corporation, providing analytical support to the secretary of defense. She was the under secretary of defense for policy from 2014 to 2016, serving as the secretary of defenses tom advisor and representing the department of defense on the National Security councils deputies committee. She also holds a bachelor of arts in Political Science and fine arts and a master of Public Policy from the university of maryland. Joining secretary wormuth for this conversation is our own alista ayres. Dr. Ayres is the first whom to serve as dean at tell cannot school of international affairs. Shes an awardwinning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit and private sectors from 2013 to 2021 she was the senior fellow for india and south asia. Dean ayres has been awarded numerous fellowships and has received honor awards for her work with the state department. She focuses on indias role in the world and the astralses with south asia. Her book request our time has come was published by Oxford University press in january 2018 and was selected by the Financial Times for its 2018 politics list. Dean ayres has worked as an interpreter for the National Committee of the red cross. She received an m. B. From Harvard College and a degree from the university of chicago. She has held the trilateral commission, the house jenld aagenda working group and the board of policy board of directors. In 2021 and this year the National Endowment for the arts democracy announced she will join the organization as a member of the board of directors. With that, please join me in welcoming secretary warmath and dean ayres. [applause] thank you, secretary, for making time to be here with us today. We are very excited about your lessons in leadership. As we were preparing to come in one thing that struck me about your biography was that you got your start in government through the pros president ial management program. Before i begin the question i will ask you about leadership, would you say a few words about your start and how the program facilitated your career path . Sec. Wormuth sure. I am a huge fan of the pmf program and probably would not be here today if it were not for that program. I was fortunate enough to be chosen for the office of secretary of defense back in 1995. I spent almost a year at the state department. I was thinking about that as i drove over here. There was a special office they set up to facilitate the Senate Ratification of the first round of data enlargement. Madeleine albright was secretary at that time. I got to see her a little bit at work, which is remarkable. And then i was very fortunate to convert into a Permanent Civil Service position on my first spot in the pentagon was with an incredible figure in National Security. She was an early mentor of mine and has been someone who has been very helpful and from whom i have learned a lot over the course in my career. So i would not be here if it were not for the program. Anyone interested in Foreign Policy or Government Service of any kind who are graduate students, i strongly encourage you to apply for that program. Dr. Ayres this is great advice and i hope you take it to heart. Heres the first question i was originally going to ask you and because we are here, we are really interested in hearing your thoughts and lessons on leadership. What do you consider the essential qualities of leadership, and how has that been manifested throughout your career . Sec. Wormuth one thing that differentiates a leader from a manager, i think a leader has to be someone who can guide people with all sorts of perspectives in a direction towards objective. And i think more characteristics i believe are very important in leaders are humility. I think it is very important. At again at a time when everything is changing, even if you are running a very Large Organization as i am now, it is really important to remember there are a ton of things that you do not know and that you need the input from other people. I think authenticity is very important for a leader. Again, i mentioned michelle flournoy, she is someone i greatly admire. We are very different people with very different styles. I realized relatively early in my journey in National Security that is much as i admired her, i could not try to lead in the same way she does. We are just different people. I feel like if you are really going to be effective, you have to be true to who you are and lean into your individual strengths, you have to be authentic. I think people can smell when you are not authentic so it is important to have authenticity. Another really important quality for leaders is integrity. These are some challenging times. But you have to do what is right. You certainly have to try to do what is right. I think maintaining your professional and personal integrity is important. Dr. Ayres as everyone here knows, this is womens history month. You are a history major. How do you see the role of women in todays Armed Services on the opportunities available to women in leadership and Career Advancement . Sec. Wormuth i think there are more opportunities for women and certainly for advancement and to be leaders today than in any time in the past. And there are a few Different Reasons for that. It all starts in the beginning of the pipeline. If you do not have enough people of diverse backgrounds, whether it is women, people of color, different ethnicities, you want to get people early to come into the pipeline of your organization if they are going to be able to gain the experiences and the leadership and maturity to serve in everincreasing positions. I think at the department of defense, i came in in 1995. I was 25 or 26 years old. It was during the clinton administration. The administration had made an effort to try to bring in more women. So there were definitely women around me i could see in leadership positions. But since that time, a couple of things have really changed that i think have improved opportunities for women to serve in leadership positions. One is when Ashton Carter was secretary of defense he opened up all positions across all of the services to women. For example, there has never been an army chief of staff, a fourstar general who leads the army who has not come out of the combat arm. If every so every chief of staff has been from the infantry, my immediate predecessor was an aviator. Women up until relatively recently were not allowed to serve in those branches in certain positions. That has now changed. I think that you will see over time, going back to my point about the pipeline, there will be more women who will have come through those communities that will gain the experiences to be able to serve at the highest level. For example right now, the fourstar commander of u. S. Southern command is aviator laura richardson. We have a Division Commander in the army, michelle schmidt. We have not had a lot of women Division Commanders but that has started to change. The navy i think is very proud that the very first woman to serve on the joint chief is admiral frank eddie, a Service Warfare operator. So you are starting to see it change. The head of u. S. Transportation command is a woman. You are starting to see changes. The other thing i think that has changed and is making it easier for women to rise up to the highest leadership positions is there are more resources to support women and families. When i think back to the group of women i started with in 1995, only a few were left and continued to stay in government. I thought to myself, why is that . A significant reason is they got to the fork of the road where they decided whether they wanted to have children. It is hard. I have two kids, twin daughters about to turn 23. It is hard to work the kinds of jobs i had and raise my kids and be the kind of mom i wanted to be and be present in their lives. I was very fortunate to have a partner who was supportive of that. But it was challenging. We have done a lot more in government i think to make it easier for men and women to have families. For example, in the army we now have 12 weeks of paid parental leave. You can take advantage of that as a woman but also as a man. You can be birthparents or adoptive parents or foster parents. It has enabled people to manage the challenge of career and family a little more easily than was the case in the past. We have done a lot to try to support childcare and make subsidies available so people can balance that. That kind of support is really important and can really make a difference in terms of women staying in the workforce long enough to rise up to higher positions of authority. Dr. Ayres the challenge of childcare effects so many sectors of the economy but it is great to hear these examples coming from the military. We heard in the introduction how large 186 billion, extensive personnel, three 130 activeduty come up one million reservists . Sec. Wormuth we have almost one Million People in the army. Activeduty is 452,000. Garden reserves the remainder. And we have a very large number of department of army civilians. We are an employer for civilians, you do not have to put a uniform on. Dr. Ayres so a huge organization. How do you balance the need for maintaining traditional leadership and values and the need for adaptability and innovation at a time when a lot is changing psychologically, in warfare, it is hard to balance both i would think. Can you speak a little bit to that . Sec. Wormuth sure. The u. S. Army has a very long history. We go back to before the official start of the United States of america. In an organization like that, culture and tradition is very important. There are many different ways that the United States army retains its culture and sort of brings people into our culture. Everything from talking about our motto, which is this will defend, to all of the heritage of our various units, the lineage and history of units that people belong to is always emphasized. At the same time, we are very focused on being innovative and on adapting. Right now in particular i would say the u. S. Army is undergoing the most profound transformation in probably the last 40 years. We have spent obviously the previous 20 years focused on counterterrorism. We have been pivoting to a much more focus on largescale combat operations, thinking about adversaries like russia, the pacing challenge of china, and to be ready for that we have to be innovative. So we are looking at how to bring Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into the army. Using the weapon systems that use directed energy and lasers and highpowered microwaves. We set up a command in 2018 called Army Futures Command which we chose to headquarter in austin, texas as opposed to it in washington because we wanted to immerse the command into a part of the country that has a lot of startups and hightech. So i think you constantly have to strive to be innovative and keep up with the times, but also remember to Stay Grounded in your lineage. I was reading a book by robert bates called the passion for leadership and he talks about not only his time as secretary of defense but also chancellor of texas and i meant university, which have texas a and and which is my hometown. He talked about the chancellor of the university as it transferred from being an allmale institution where they were all cadets to being broader, excepting women, he made the decision not everyone had to join the poor. But he retained the corps of cadets and growing up there, it is an important part of the texas a and m culture and he was very wise to keep it even as the Universities University focus brought into. It speaks to the importance of staying anchored to the things that make your institution unique. Dr. Ayres as you think about leadership, how do you think about building an ethics and accountability into leadership . Can you speak a little bit about that . Sec. Wormuth sure. I think it is very important. I think leaders need to have integrity. We all need to have integrity as professionals and whatever field we go into. Particularly at a time i think we are you see a lot of declining trust in institutions here in the United States. So to me it speaks to more than ever the importance of having a culture of ethics and accountability. In the army, we try to create that culture of accountability and a lot of different ways. West Point Military academy has the motto duty, honor, country. There is a very strict honor code at west point. There is a lot of emphasis at the academy on character, leadership, integrity, ethics, accountability. But of course west point only produces about a quarter of our officers. The others come from rotc programs around the country. But i would say at every level with our leaders, whether they are lieutenants or jr. Ncos, lieutenant col. s take battalion command. We take command of battalions and there is an emphasis in those courses on ethics and accountability. We do the same thing for our baby generals, when they become one star generals they go through professional military education and part of that is about accountability and ethics and we talk about how the more senior you become, the more you are operating in a fishbowl, the more you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. But i will be honest, there is certainly a perception in some parts of the army that there is a double standard. That there is a perception that we struggle with accountability. And certainly come very recently i made a decision based on some credible information to suspend a fourstar general. That is a very significant step to take. We do not do that very often. And there is an investigation and that has to proceed and i do not want to say much more about it given that the investigation is ongoing. But we need to hold ourselves accountable and there is a perception in some quarters that ncos are held to a different standard than officers, that officers will sometimes get a slap on the wrist where an mco is more severely punished. I think it is very important again in this time of declining trust in institutions that we demonstrate not just in words but in deeds that we are an ethical institution and we do have rules that apply to everyone and that we hold everyone accountable to the rules and standards. Dr. Ayres a quick followup for some who might not know, ncos noncommissioned officer. How does that differ from other officers . Sec. Wormuth officers and noncommissioned officers, when a Young American and less in the army as a privates, you can be promoted over time and become a jr. Noncommissioned officer. We have first sergeant, sergeant first class, Staff Sergeant all the way up to the Sergeant Major of the army, the highest enlisted ranking person in the army. It is often the nco that teaches our first lieutenants how to show them the ropes when they first come in and are in charge of groups of soldiers. So the ncos are very important parts of the army, the backbone of the army. Something that differentiates us from any other military around the world and also i would argue gives us a comparative advantage compared to the russian army which does not have an nco corps. But they tend to be the working class, the bluecollar part of the army as opposed to maybe the officer part which you could think of as whitecollar. At that again speaks to sometimes the perception that there is a double standard for how they are held accountable compared officers. Dr. Ayres let me come back to the question of leadership. Students sometimes come to me with questions about next steps and Career Pathways in life. I know mine has not been linear. Can you speak a little bit about challenges, leadership challenges you may have faced in your career and have you overcome them . Because pathways are not always that everything works out well the f