Brian
Finlay
Brian Finlay is president and CEO of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in Washington, DC. His areas of expertise include nonproliferation, transnational crime, counter-trafficking, supply chain security, and private-sector engagement. Brian is also an adjunct instructor in the School of International Service at American University in Washington. He previously served as a researcher at the Brookings Institution, and a program officer at the Century Foundation. He was also a project manager for the Laboratory Center for Disease Control/Health Canada, and worked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He chairs the board of directors of iMMAP, an information management and data analytics organization focused on improving humanitarian relief and development coordination. He also serves on the advisory board of Black Market Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that works to raise awareness around illicit global trade, and on the editorial board of Global Security, a journal of health, science, and policy published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
I’m looking for partners that can help me… go beyond admiring problems to developing practical pilot solutions that can ultimately be proven and scaled.
A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… when I convinced a room full of hardnosed insurance executives to invest in innovative solutions to secure foreign nuclear facilities, technologies, and materials.
Innovations in my field I’m most excited to work on… involve applications of technology that both yield a social value (i.e., nonproliferation) and corporate value (i.e., enhanced market value).