Nola Haynes is an academic, policy writer, and advocate. Nola’s interests centers on emerging threats, WMD in space, strategic competition and intersectionality. Most recently, Nola was named one of the top 50 leaders in national security and foreign affairs by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Diversity in National Security (DINSN). She is the director of the West Coast chapter of Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (WCAPS) and sits on several boards including, the Women’s Caucus for the International Studies Association communications team (WCIS), Foreign Policy board for American Political Science Association (APSA) and ISA West. She is a member of Black Professional in International Affairs (BPIA) communications team along with being an alumnus of the WestExec Advisors mentoring program. As a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, Nola works as an Ops Coordinator to help resettle Afghan allies with Evacuate Our Allies (EOA) and is a policy advocate for the Afghan Adjustment Act. Nola has over ten years experience working in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and is a proud New Orleans native, vegan-adjacent, dog mom, yogi and hiker. Nola’s traveled extensively, conducted research in West Africa and Central America on the intersections of terrorism, religion, gender, crisis and conflict. Nola holds degrees from UCLA, Harvard Divinity School and USC and is a regular guest on the Black News Channel (BNC) discussing foreign policy and national security related issues and will appear on MSNBC to discuss Russian and Ukraine.
