Reimagining Security for the 21st Century
The world's most dangerous threats are converging faster than our institutions can adapt.
Nuclear weapons. Climate disruption. Artificial intelligence. Public health. Democratic erosion.
These challenges are deeply interconnected. Yet the systems designed to manage them remain fragmented, siloed, and rooted in assumptions from a different era.
Women Transforming Global Security (WTGS) brings together extraordinary women leaders from across sectors to develop the ideas, relationships, and frameworks needed to meet this challenge.
BETTER SECURITY REQUIRES BROADER LEADERSHIP
The people making security decisions shape which risks are prioritized, which solutions are considered, and whose interests are protected. Women remain significantly underrepresented across the institutions responsible for managing global security.
WTGS is women-led because better security requires the expertise, experience, and leadership that has too often been excluded from these conversations. This is about expanding the range of ideas and approaches available to solve interconnected problems.
BUILDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF SECURITY THINKING.
WTGS is more than a network. It's a platform for developing new ideas, testing new frameworks, and connecting leaders across disciplines.
Our members bring experience from government, international institutions, science, diplomacy, technology, climate, human rights, and security. Together, they're exploring what security looks like when we stop treating interconnected threats as separate problems.
We're developing an Integrated Security framework designed to help institutions understand and respond to how these risks interact and reinforce one another.
A NETWORK DESIGNED TO MOVE IDEAS INTO ACTION.
At a WTGS retreat, a conversation between a nuclear expert and climate scientist surfaced new questions about how a changing physical environment could affect nuclear strategy. Those insights subsequently reached senior U.S. nuclear planners.
This is how change happens: connecting people who rarely have the opportunity to think and work together.
WHAT COULD SECURITY LOOK LIKE IF WE DESIGNED IT FOR THE WORLD AHEAD?
- The security architecture we inherited was built for a different era.
- The threats defining this century do not respect institutional boundaries. Our solutions shouldn't either.
- WTGS is building a community of leaders with the relationships, ideas, and imagination to create something better.
LEADERS WITH THE EXPERIENCE TO SHAPE WHAT COMES NEXT.
Our initiative represents an unprecedented collaboration between The Elders(opens in new tab), Ploughshares(opens in new tab), and Horizon 2045(opens in new tab)—organizations united in their commitment to women’s leadership and breakthrough thinking at the intersection of global challenges.
Founding Partners
Mary Robinson
Former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Helen Clark
Former Prime Minister of New Zealand
Dr. Emma Belcher
President of Ploughshares
Erika Gregory
President of Horizon 2045
Support the Network
Help catalyze a network that multiplies impact across nuclear risk reduction, climate action, AI governance, democracy, and human rights.