Gloria Duffy

Gloria Charmian Duffy (born September 4, 1953) is a former U.S. Department of Defense official, businesswoman, social entrepreneur and nonprofit executive.

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 also taught sports to developmentally and intellectually challenged kids at Las Trampas School, through Futures Explored in Lafayette.

Her master's thesis was on the impact of US and Soviet policies in Iran and Iraq in the early 1970s on the two countries' Kurdish populations, completed with support from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., where she was a Humanitarian Policy Studies Fellow in the summer of 1976.

She graduated from Acalanes High School in 1971, completing a full curriculum of life science courses.

She excelled in Spanish, receiving a medal for her proficiency from the National Society of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

She was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Blueprint.

While a student, she served on the Lafayette School District's Drug Education Committee.

She also co-founded, with her classmate Dr. Donald Goff, the Lafayette Youth Services Commission, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2021.

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, her major was interdisciplinary studies, she was a College Scholar and she was co-editor-in-chief of The Occidental Weekly, the campus newspaper.

She also served on the college's Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee.

Duffy 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, studied with the late Dr. Marshall D. Shulman, and served as research assistant to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski prior to his appointment as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter.

She was also research assistant to Dr. Gordon Adams.

After completing her coursework at Columbia at the end of 1976, Duffy worked as a resident consultant at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California and then as Communications Director at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C., before returning to academia to complete her Ph.D.

From 1977 to 1978, Duffy was a Resident Consultant at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

RAND was supporting the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) for the US Department of Energy.

Duffy authored a study for INFCE of Soviet nuclear exports and non-proliferation policies.

From 1978 to 1980 she was Communications Director of the Arms Control Association, in Washington, D.C. and editor of its publication, Arms Control Today, which she and her colleagues improved and upgraded.

In 1980, Dr. Coit Blacker invited Duffy to become an Arms Control Fellow at Stanford University's Arms Control Program (later renamed the Center for International Security and Arms Control or CISAC).

Duffy held a Hubert H. Humphrey Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, from the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which supported the preparation of her Columbia University doctoral thesis while at CISAC, on the impact of US domestic politics on the non-ratification of the SALT II Treaty.

She was one of four female fellows Blacker recruited, notable in the largely male international security and arms control field, including Condoleezza Rice, who later became National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State; the late Janne Nolan, and Cynthia Roberts.

Duffy and Rice lived together in a rented house in Palo Alto.

Nolan began calling the group "the Fellowettes," a name that stuck and the group became life-long friends and colleagues.

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, conflict resolution and real estate management and development.

She has founded, served as President/CEO and chaired the board of a number of projects and organizations, including serving as the CEO of three organizations for a total of 39 years.

Organizations she has founded, co-founded, of which she has chaired the board or served as President/CEO include the Lafayette Youth Services Commission, Global Outlook, Ploughshares Fund, the World Forum of Silicon Valley, CRDF Global, the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy and the Commonwealth Club of California.

In 1982, Duffy become the first executive director of a start-up organisation, Ploughshares Fund, a public foundation initiated in San Francisco by philanthropist Sally Lilienthal, former Nixon Administration official Lewis H. Butler and others.

Ploughshares Fund works directly and provides grants to individuals and institutions working to diminish the threats of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation.

She served as executive director, 1982–1984, setting up initial grantmaking guidelines and procedures, helping to shape the funding priorities and process, and undertaking a number of special projects.

Duffy was associated for 38 years with CISAC at Stanford, returning as a fellow in residence from 1985 to 1987 and from 1995 to 1996, teaching, participating in several policy research projects and leading one of them, and editing/authoring two books.

She served on the Board of Visitors, renamed the International Advisory Board, of the Freeman Spogli Institute, of which CISAC is a part, at Stanford for 22 years.

Since 1996, she has been the president, CEO and a member of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth Club of California, America's largest and oldest public forum, founded in 1903.

She reflected on the early history of CISAC, the impact of its work and her colleagues including physicists Dr. Sidney Drell and Dr. Wolfgang Panofsky, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and the other "fellowettes," Dr. Blacker, China scholar Dr. John Lewis, Secretary of Defense Dr. William Perry and others at CISAC at its 25th anniversary commemoration in 2009.

From 2010 to 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 building received a 2016 California Heritage Council award for historic preservation.

In February, 2022 Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi appointed Dr. Duffy to serve as a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

The Strategic Posture Commission submitted its report to the Congress and the Executive Branch in October, 2023.

The grand opening for the club's new building took place on September 12, 2017.

She also spoke about the impact of the Arms Control Program's founder, and CISAC's first co-director, Dr. John Lewis, at a conference commemorating his legacy, held at Stanford in January, 2018.