Nancy J Bearg

Nancy Bearg is an American national security policy professional with extensive high-level experience in foreign policy, defense, and economic development in the US Government, Congress, and the non-profit sector. She has worked on policy and program issues in multiple areas, including conflict prevention, management, intervention, and post-conflict peacebuilding; poverty and development; peacekeeping and humanitarian operations; refugees; public diplomacy; United Nations; US-Muslim relations; and strategic and conventional forces. She also has had careers in the academic and business sectors.

Ms. Bearg is the former National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States, George H. W. Bush. She was the first woman to hold this post. She later served on the National Security Council staff when he was President as Director of International Programs and Public Diplomacy. 

In her early government career, she began as a State Department summer intern then was on the National Security Council staff; on the professional staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee (first woman professional staff member); worked at the Congressional Budget Office; was Director of Policy Analysis for the Near East, Africa and South Asia in the Department of Defense; and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Personnel. This was followed by her service at the White House and time overseas.

After government, in the non-profit sector, Ms. Bearg was President and CEO of an international development non-profit organization (named EnterpriseWorks Worldwide at the time). She has worked at the Aspen Institute as founder and Director of the International Peace, Security and Prosperity Program and as a senior advisor at the Project on National Security Reform and on US-Muslim relations at Search for Common Ground.  

She is the author and editor of five national security books, including two on conflict management and prevention and three on global poverty (Aspen Institute Press under name Nancy Bearg Dyke). She has a chapter, “George H. W. Bush and the Exercise of U.S. Power for Human Rights and Humanitarian Purposes,” in Transforming Our World: President George H. W. Bush and American Foreign Policy, edited by Andrew Natsios and Andrew Card.

She taught a graduate seminar called Leadership Vision and Strategy at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University from 2007-2019, as well as a course in strategic planning. She currently is Executive Professor at the Willamette University Atkinson Graduate School of Management.

Her passions are conflict prevention and post-conflict peacebuilding, entrepreneurship, and leadership. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ms. Bearg is Co-Founding Partner of Reboot Partners LLC and co-author of the Reboot Partners’ books The Retirement Boom: An All-Inclusive Guide to Money, Life, and Health in Your Next Chapter and Reboot Your Life: Enhance Your Career and Life by Taking a Break.

She holds an undergraduate degree from Willamette University and a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.  She has two daughters and three grandchildren and moved to Portland, Oregon in 2017 after over 40 years in Washington DC and six years abroad.

She received the Willamette Distinguished Alumni Citation for achievement in public service in 1994.