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Leadership and Conflict
Every organization experiences conflict. Leadership is using the scars we have and the skills that we have built through our own struggles and failures to turn conflict into positive change and growth. By showing our scars, we humanize ourselves, each other, those we lead, and those whom our work impacts.

Using the backdrop of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jeannette describes what serving as a female Marine in an institution designed for and by men taught her about leading others and about leadership itself.

Leadership, Diversity of Thought, and Why It Matters
Using her experiences as a Marine, and supported by academic research, Jeannette discusses the diversity of thought from a practical perspective. When leaders see only one perspective, the organizations that they lead are less effective. Only through including a broad range of perspectives, through the development of diverse teams and leaders at every level of leadership, can the full picture of the challenges we face be seen. Without those perspectives, the solutions we develop will be less effective and less successful.

Apply a Gender Lens to National Security
When considering national security, diversity of thought is no less important than it is to the function of our business organizations—in fact, it is more critical than ever. When considering national security, if leaders see only one perspective, our government and military institutions and the policies they develop and implement suffer. At best, these are ineffective—and at worst, they can endanger national security.

The perspectives of women, in particular, are often excluded from national security processes and policy-making, and the dissonance between the experiences of women and the assumed objectivity of mainstream security represents a gap. This gap can lead to policy flaws and strategic failures.

Only through inclusive leadership, the development of diverse teams and leaders, and the application of a gender lens, can we develop a well-rounded security picture and more effectively seek peace and stability.

Affecting Change and Dreaming Big
When Jeannette was a teenager, her family inherited a violin that had belonged to her great-grandmother. Her mother, 39 years old at the time, decided to learn to play the violin—saying that she would be 40 years old one day either way and that she would prefer to be 40 years old playing the violin given the choice. Jeannette’s mother has now played the violin for the New Orleans Civic Symphony for nearly two decades.

If you don’t try, nothing will change. Learning from her mother, Jeannette internalized this mantra from her earliest days. The idea that each person has the power to affect great change has informed every aspect of Jeannette’s life, from talking her way back into the U.S. Naval Academy after an initial failure to speaking up in a pivotal meeting with the Marine Corps leadership nearly 25 years later. Using her life’s experiences, Jeannette explores how thinking and dreaming big can change the world.

Biography

Jeannette Gaudry Haynie, Ph.D., is a career Marine Corps officer and combat veteran with a Ph.D. in International Relations. A New Orleans native and a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, she is a Cobra attack helicopter pilot by trade with multiple operational deployments.

While on active duty, she earned the coveted Night Systems Instructor qualification while pregnant, teaching new pilots how to fly and fight with Night Vision Goggles until her third trimester. She proceeded to fly pregnant for all three children as her career progressed in later years.

After transferring to the Reserves when her oldest daughter was three, she entered academia to study and better understand her operational experiences as a Marine and as a woman serving during wartime. Jeannette earned her Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of New Orleans and her Doctorate in International Relations from the George Washington University while serving on the Joint Staff and in the Marine Corps Commandant’s think tank.

Jeannette’s academic research focuses on the intersections of gender, leadership, and security, and her operational experiences and academic work are deeply connected. She has advised the military senior leadership on critical and creative thinking for warfighting effectiveness, served as the subject matter expert on the international Women, Peace, and Security agenda, and developed the vision for strategic talent management for warfighting effectiveness.

Jeannette has taught courses in Gender and Conflict, International Relations, and Quantitative Methods at the George Washington University and Tulane University, where her analyses focused on disaster resilience. She served as Senior Fellow and then Co-Director of nonprofit Women in International Security, where she conducted research into the gender dimensions of various security phenomena.

Along with her husband, a fellow Marine Corps officer, she leads a leadership program for youth that seeks to develop critical and creative thinking skills while helping children learn and grow from failure. Jeannette is a member of the Presidential Leadership Scholars’ Class of 2019, where the roots of her biggest project to date were planted: she is the Executive Director of the Athena Leadership Project, which seeks to elevate the stories of female veterans and transform how we consider gender, leadership, and security.

With a group of fellow Naval Academy female classmates, she connects generations of Academy graduates and leaders through weekly articles, and she co-hosts an Annapolis-focused podcast on leadership, gender, and military service.

She runs marathons, attempts to do pull-ups, and she and her husband have three children.