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Who We Are

The Athena Leadership Project is an organization that seeks to build our collective understanding of how diverse teams and leaders shape security. While research into diversity and outcomes is being done in the business community and in health care, that is not the case in security. Through Athena, we plan to change that.

Founded and led by two Marine Corps attack helicopter pilots whose experiences led them to study war and gender as a lifelong mission, Athena is a research program at heart with more inclusive and effective leadership and greater peace and security as the desired result.

Including the voices of leaders who face different challenges and inequities — and are normally excluded from roles of power — is critical to finding unique and creative solutions to intractable problems… like war.

We plan to accomplish this by:

1. Building a research program around the study of leadership, gender, and security outcomes to develop our collective understanding of how gender diversity can drive more effective decision-making;

2. Elevating the lived experiences of diverse leaders, particularly female veterans, whose stories powerfully illustrate the value of diverse perspectives to security; and

3. Developing policy, doctrine, training and relevant implementation guides in order to apply lessons learned to increase the effectiveness of teams, leaders, and government and military agencies and institutions.

Remember that war has many faces — and most do not look like your own.