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A Fireside Chat with Avril Haines and Jen Easterly
Event Overview: Pending
Speaker Bio: Jen Easterly is a Visiting Fellow of Practice with the Oxford Programme for Cyber and Technology Policy (OxCTP) at the Blavatnik School of Government. Jen’s career spans more than three decades, including multiple combat deployments in the US Army, where she played a pivotal role in the creation of US Cyber Command and built and led the Army’s first cyber battalion. Jen is the former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and served twice at the White House, including as Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director for Counterterrorism and earlier as Senior Policy Advisor to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. She also served as the Deputy for Counterterrorism at the National Security Agency and as a senior leader in Tailored Access Operations, NSA’s elite hacking team.
A distinguished graduate of West Point and Rhodes Scholar, Jen is a two-time recipient of the Bronze Star as well as numerous awards, including the George C. Marshall Award in Ethical Leadership, the Girls Who Code Sisterhood Award, the Champion of Internet Freedom Award, the Admiral Grace Hopper Award, and the James W. Foley American Hostage Freedom Award. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Jen is the recipient of the Aspen Institute Finance Leaders Fellowship, the New America Foundation Senior International Security Fellowship, and the Director, National Security Agency Fellowship.
Speaker Bio: Avril D. Haines is the former US Director of National Intelligence. As a member of President Biden’s cabinet, she led the US Intelligence Community and served as the President’s principal intelligence adviser. Haines has held senior roles across government, including principal deputy national security advisor, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, legal adviser to the National Security Council, and deputy chief counsel to the US Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations. She has also worked in academia, having served as a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University.
Haines received her Bachelor of Arts in Physics from the University of Chicago and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. She served as a law clerk for Judge Danny Boggs on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and founded and ran a bookstore café for five years while engaged in community service in Baltimore. In 2017, President Obama appointed her to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. She has also served on several boards and advisory groups over the years.
Date:
12 February 2026, 19:00
Venue:
All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details:
TBD
Speakers:
Avril Haines (All Souls College),
Jen Easterly (Blavatnik School of Government)
Organiser:
Zachary Turinsky (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group
Booking required?:
Recommended
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Christopher Morris
