Gloria Duffy

Gloria Charmian Duffy (born September 4, 1953) is a former U.S. Department of Defense official, businesswoman and nonprofit executive. Since 1996, she has been the president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club of California, America's largest and oldest public forum, founded in 1903.[1][2] From 2010 - 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 grand opening for the Club's new building took place on September 12, 2017.[3] The building received a 2016 California Heritage Council award for historic preservation.[4]

DASD Gloria C Duffy in 1995
Gloria Duffy
Gloria C. Duffy in 2017
BornSeptember 4, 1953
NationalityUnited States of America
Known forU.S. Department of Defense official

Early life and education

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.[5] She graduated from Acalanes High School in 1971, having completed life sciences courses capped by an invitation-only human physiology course. She also excelled in Spanish, receiving a medal for her proficiency from the National Society of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. She was the editor of the school newspaper, The Blueprint. While a student, she served on the Lafayette School District's Drug Education Committee. She also co-founded the Lafayette Youth Services Commission 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 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 and served as research assistant to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski prior to his appointment as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. She also held a Hubert H. Humphery Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, from the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the Department of State. She was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from the University of San Francisco in 2006.

Career

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 served as the CEO of three organizations for a total of 38 years.

Dismantling WMD in the Former Soviet Union
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter with 25th anniversary Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Award recipients Dr. Gloria Duffy, Ms. Laura Holgate, Dr. Susan Koch and Ms. Jane Wales in 2016

Duffy served as deputy assistant secretary of defense and Special Coordinator for Cooperative Threat Reduction, under Defense Secretaries Les Aspin and William Perry and Assistant Secretary Ashton Carter, in the Clinton Administration, and was responsible for negotiating the dismantlement and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.[6] She completed over fifty agreements with these countries for dismantling and disposal of their weapons of mass destruction,[7][8] managing a $400 million annual budget, and received the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service in 1995. In May 2016, the 25th anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar legislation, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter presented Dr. Duffy and four other individuals with inaugural Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Awards, at a ceremony at the Pentagon.[9][10]

Civilian Research and Development Foundation

In 1995, while at the Defense Department, Duffy responded to a request from the White House to fund a newly created organization, the Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF Global), providing the initial $5 million for its budget from Defense Department funds, which was then matched by philanthropist George Soros.[11] Its creation, through the U.S. National Science Foundation, was mandated by the U.S. Congress, led by the late House Science and Technology Committee Chairman George Brown. The initial purpose was to provide employment in civilian scientific research to former Soviet WMD scientists who were unemployed or underemployed, and whose skills might be in demand by countries or groups seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

After leaving the U.S. government, Duffy served on, then chaired, the Board of Directors of the CRDF. She served on the Board from 1996–2009, and chaired the Board for ten years, from 1998 until 2008 During this time, the organization grew to raise and spend nearly $300 million in government and private funds, and expanded its operations worldwide. Currently, CRDF Global is a major funder for collaborative scientific research between American scientists and colleagues in other countries. It provides alternative employment for weapons scientists, promotes scientific collaboration on global health problems like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, biosafety and biosecurity, helps emerging countries to develop science and technology based economies, and helps the U.S. to form scientific links in other countries.[12]

Ploughshares Fund

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 provides grants to individuals and institutions working to diminish the threats of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. She served as executive director, 1982–1984. During her tenure, Ploughshares funded a project between the US Natural Resources Defense Council and the Soviet Academy of Sciences to establish and collect data from seismic stations near the Soviet Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site, demonstrating that seismic monitoring of low-level nuclear tests was possible.[13] Demonstrating the verifiability of a low-threshold nuclear test ban enabled the United Nations to adopt the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996. In the years since, she has served on both the Board of Directors and the Advisory Board of Ploughshares Fund. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board.

Conflict Resolution

Duffy has served as a mediator and in conflict resolution initiatives including a 1998 effort working with the national security advisors to the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to reduce hostility among the three countries. In 1997, as President of the Guadalupe River Park and Gardens Corporation in San Jose, she brought together environmental activists and public agencies at odds over environmental mitigation of a flood control project on the Guadalupe River, helping lead to a resolution of the issues and forward progress in the flood control project and creating the Guadalupe River Park.[14]

Trusteeships, Professional Committees, Advisory Boards

Duffy has served as a Trustee, Chair of the Board, President of the Board, Director and Advisory Board member of some two dozen organizations nationally and locally in the Bay Area. These include the Boards of Directors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Chicago and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility in Palo Alto, California. She served as Board President of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, and served on the Board of Directors of Los Gatos Community Hospital, now El Camino Hospital. She has been a Trustee of Occidental College in Los Angeles since 2006, and is Vice Chair of its Executive Committee. She has chaired the Board's Academic Affairs Committee and co-chaired the Board's Student Life and Enrollment Management Committee. She served as a Trustee and on the Executive Committee of Dominican University of California, in San Rafael, California.

She served for 20 years on the International Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Advisory Board of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA. She has served on the Science, Arms Control and International Security Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and on the selection committee for the Science and Technology Policy Fellows program.

Dr. Duffy was for seven years a Board Director and Treasurer of the Compton Foundation, where she oversaw the management of $120 million in assets. She has been a member of or chaired committees funding grants, fellowships and scholarships for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, the Truman Scholarships (the national memorial to President Truman), the University of California system, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a number of other organizations.

She is an Advisor for Miracle Messages, which helps volunteers use videos and social media to reunite homeless individuals with their family members and friends. She is also on the National Advisory Board of Voice of the People, a Washington, D.C. polling organization.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Silicon Valley Capital Club and the Lafayette United Methodist Church.

Editing, Writing, Congressional Testimony

As Communications Director for the Arms Control Association, in Washington, D.C. from 1978-1980, she was editor of the magazine, Arms Control Today. She oversees The Commonwealth magazine at the Commonwealth Club, and oversaw publication of Each a Mighty Voice: A Century of Speeches from The Commonwealth Club of California, Heyday Books, 2004.

Duffy is the author or editor of a number of books and articles. Her first policy report was Power Politics: The Nuclear Industry and Nuclear Exports, with Gordon Adams, published by the Council on Economic Priorities in 1978, followed by Soviet Nuclear Energy: Domestic and International Policies, published in 1979 by the Rand Corporation.[15] This was followed by the textbook Blacker and Duffy, International Arms Control Issues and Agreements, Stanford University Press, 1984 and Duffy, et al. Compliance and the Future of Arms Control, Ballinger, 1988. She has published articles in journals in her field such as International Security,[16][17] the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,[18] Arms Control Today and Science Magazine, and contributed chapters to many edited volumes on international security and foreign policy.[19][20]

Beginning with a widely-reprinted article about Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Washington Post in August of 1976, "The Man Behind Carter's Foreign Policy," Dr. Duffy has written for many newspapers including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. She was a columnist for the "Christian Science Monitor" in 1980-82, and for Pacific News Service in the 1980s. She writes a regular column, Insight, for The Commonwealth magazine, as well as periodic op-ed pieces for the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, on Medium and for other online and print publications. A book collection of her Insight columns is in preparation and publication is expected in late 2020.

She periodically writes, speaks, holds public forums and works with public officials on issues of protecting elders from financial and other abuse.[21][22][23][24] She is working to establish more stringent local rules of court for probate in California counties that do not currently require attorneys to justify their fees as benefitting a protected person or their estate.[25] The current laxity in rules is leading to significant financial abuse of protected people, their families and their estates.

Dr. Duffy testified in 1987 before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, on arms control treaty compliance, and in 1994 before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.[26]

Dr. Duffy speaks and writes frequently about ethics, collaboration and cooperation. Her lectures on these topics include "Getting Things Done" at the Commonwealth Club,[27] her 2017 speech at the Chautauqua Institution, and her sermon, "The Power of Civility" at Lafayette United Methodist Church[28][29][30]

Honors and awards

Duffy is a recipient of the Janet Gray Hayes Award, presented annually to an outstanding woman leader in honor of San Jose's first woman mayor;[31] a Character Award from the Silicon Valley Monterey Bay Boy Scout Council; A Woman of Achievement Award for Public Service from the San Jose Mercury News and the Women's Foundation, and a Human Relations Award from Santa Clara County. In 2019, she received a Good Neighbor Award from Miracle Messages. She has been recognized over many years as a leader in business and management by the San Francisco Business Times, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the Alameda County Commission on the Status of Women. In 2019, she was selected by the San Francisco Business Times as the most admired non-profit CEO in the Bay Area.[32] Duffy is the 2020 recipient of the Alumni Seal Award as Occidental College's Alum of the Year.

Dr. Duffy has held a high level security clearance from the US government since 1977. As Board Chair, Dr. Duffy held the facility clearance for classified research at the Civilian R&D Foundation.

Personal life and business activities

She is married to Rod Diridon, Sr., former Chair of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and a leader in transportation policy and the development of public transportation systems regionally, nationally and internationally. The Amtrak and Caltrain Station in San Jose is named the Diridon Station, after Rod Diridon. They have two children and four grandchildren. Rod Diridon Jr. served two terms on the Santa Clara City Council, and is currently Senior Manager of State and Local Government Affairs/West for Apple Computer.

In 2021, Duffy marks 56 years of responsibilities as an employee, owner and managing partner in her family real estate and land development business. She has also been a limited partner in a dozen non-family real estate projects.

In the mid-2000s, she was a partner in the McCloud Book Gallery, an independent bookstore and art gallery in Siskiyou County, California.[33]

Dr. Duffy played competitive basketball in high school and tennis in high school and college; and currently swims, hikes, bicycles, skis, kayaks and practices yoga. She has summited Mt. Shasta in California (14,179 ft) and Mt. Chirripo in Costa Rica (12,533 ft).

References
  1. "Commonwealth Club CEO Gloria Duffy Has Built a Career Out of Showcasing Viewpoints". sanfran.com. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  2. "Commonwealth Club: Gloria Duffy". commonwealthclub.org. Retrieved 2010-01-30.
  3. "Commonwealth Club moves into new home". 2017-09-13.
  4. "Welcome to the California Heritage Council. The Oldest Preservation Organization Statewide".
  5. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/George-Thomas-Duffy-World-War-II-veteran-and-2720832.php
  6. "Remarks on "Securing the Oceans, the Internet, and Space: Protecting T".
  7. https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/History/With%20Courage%20and%20Persistence%20CTR.pdf
  8. Ellis, Jason D. (2001). Defense by Other Means: The Politics of US-NIS Threat Reduction and Nuclear Security Cooperation. ISBN 9780275969400.
  9. "Carter Commemorates 25th Anniversary of Nunn-Lugar Legislation".
  10. http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/755216/carter-threat-reduction-program-was-novel-response-to-historic-change
  11. "Civilian Research and Development Foundation Symposium".
  12. "Congressional Record".
  13. "Sally Lilienthal, 87; raised funds aimed at peace, global security". Los Angeles Times. 2006-10-29.
  14. https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=ggulrev
  15. "Soviet Nuclear Energy". 1979.
  16. Duffy, Gloria (1978). "Soviet Nuclear Export". International Security. 3 (1): 83–111. doi:10.2307/2626645. JSTOR 2626645.
  17. Duffy, Gloria (1983). "Crisis Mangling and the Cuban Brigade". International Security. 8 (1): 67–87. doi:10.2307/2538486. JSTOR 2538486. S2CID 155067735.
  18. "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists". October 1987.
  19. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm%3A978-1-349-10143-6%2F1.pdf
  20. Altmann, Jürgen; Rotblat, Joseph (2012-12-06). Verification of Arms Reductions: Nuclear, Conventional and Chemical. ISBN 9783642466847.
  21. Duffy, Gloria (2013-05-15). "Elder abuse a growing, 'silent' crime". SFGate. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igrRhlxJdYo&t=474s
  23. https://cdn.commonwealthclub.org/s3fs-public/bildschirmfoto_2020-06-05_um_8.11.33_am.png
  24. https://medium.com/@gloriaduffy/elder-financial-abuse-by-other-means-b5b94d41db3e
  25. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/06/opinion-courts-should-not-be-a-vehicle-for-elder-financial-abuse/
  26. "Congressional Record, Volume 140 Issue 35 (Thursday, March 24, 1994)".
  27. "DR. GLORIA DUFFY: GETTING THINGS DONE | Commonwealth Club".
  28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocs8qlpS0Yk
  29. https://chqdaily.com/2017/08/commonwealth-club-ceo-gloria-duffy-address-leaderships-ethical-challenges/
  30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igrRhlxJdYo&t=96s
  31. "Pizarro:Ex-jackpot winner honored by college". 2007-03-07.
  32. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/event/163882/2019/most-admired-ceos
  33. "Mount Shasta | Via Magazine".
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