The Women Inspired to Serve Conference, held Friday, provided an opportunity for students and professors to contribute ideas about women’s leadership in international security. Throughout the conference, two panels were hosted, as well as a keynote address by Raquel Bono, director of the Defense Health Agency.
The first of the two panels was titled “Civilian Leadership in National Security,” with speakers Kristin St. Peter, a deputy general counsel and secretary at the Aerospace Corporation; Sarah Budds, a strategy and organization consultant; and Sarah Spence, an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The second panel, titled “Courageous Leadership: Lessons from the Field,” hosted speakers Bernadette Alway, a former supervisory special agent in the FBI; Michael Anne Casey Tyler, a former senior intelligence executive in the CIA; Adriana Brazelton, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army; and Austin Shultz, a former command sergeant major in the U.S. Army. Each discussed difficulties and the role of women in international security.
“There are very few women in the field that we are in, or that we are choosing to go into, and then within that, the pressures of moving up into a leadership position,” said Alway. “The way to combat it is knowledge. Being knowledgeable, being good at what you do, taking pride in what you do and not taking any kind of shortcut. Or, you know, some people say, I rise by pushing other people down. I’ve always been bringing the team up.”
“I just had some great male mentors, who are the majority, who all they did was just give me an opportunity and because they’re sitting at the table, they believe that both men and women have an equal chance to be able to be successful. So I had to perform and be competent,” Brazelton said. “Don’t self-select out and don’t quit.”
“This conference provides the opportunity to see what a future in these careers could look like. What are the skills that I need to build? Who can I talk to? It’s a beautiful, beautiful networking event where you need to go, how upperclassmen can help with internship applications, how these professionals can help you in the real world and give you connections actually in D.C. or wherever you eventually want to end up, or the sector, or the department you want to go towards,” said junior Sophia Almeida, an attendee of the conference each year since 2023.
Ryn Weiss, the president of the Women in International Security club and one of the organizers of the conference, spoke with The Observer about the event. The conference, he said, began in 2021 as a partnership between the University of Notre Dame Research and Women in Defense.
Since 2023, the Women in International Security club has hosted the conference, with the exception of 2025, when the conference was cancelled due to funding constraints.
“I think there are a lot of girls at Notre Dame who are interested in the international security space, but find that frequently the speakers that Notre Dame brings in, to no fault of its own, they’re all men, which of course is fine and they’re great resources, but I think there is like an element of being a woman in that space that you miss out on by not including them,” said Weiss.
The Women in International Security club is dedicated to women’s inclusion and leadership in the peace and security fields. It provides resources and services to build a global network of women in International Security and has members who are both women and men in 47 countries. Its members work in governments, NGOs and think tanks, among other fields.
“We’re definitely hoping that this conference brings together both men and women, even though I think the main target is women interested in this space. I hope that girls, women, students and faculty come away from the conference, feeling empowered and definitely inspired. Additionally, I want people to have mentors. I want the networking to happen. I want people to also know about spaces that they might not have otherwise,” said Weiss.
