VADM Timothy Szymanski, USN (Ret.), served as deputy commander of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCM), and is the former commander of U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command. He also served as assistant commanding general to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he also completed a Master of Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy at the Joint Advanced Warfghting School. VADM Szymanski’s previous operational assignments include squadron commander, operations officer, and deputy commanding officer at Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He commanded Special Boat Unit 26, SEAL Team 2, and also served as deputy commanding general, for sustainment, to Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. VADM Szymanski also served on the Joint Staff, in the J3 directorate for Special Operations, as the Global War on Terror (GWOT) branch chief, and as chief of staff of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell. 

Walter Berbrick is running to represent the people of Rhode Island’s First District. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Walter followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and enlisted in the Navy. He then earned a commission as an intelligence officer mostly focused on countering violent extremism. As a civil servant at the U.S. Naval War College, Walter worked for the last 15 years educating and bringing together leaders across our government to identify threats to our country. His collaborative approach to helping our country’s leaders prevent war and adapt to climate change led him to national security roles at the State Department and Pentagon. As a community volunteer leader with the American Red Cross, Walter has helped Rhode Islanders prepare for and recover from emergencies and disasters. In 2012, Walter graduated with his doctorate in law and policy from Northeastern University. Walter lives in Middletown with his wife, Laurie, and their two children.

Lawson W. Brigham is a Global Fellow in the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute. He is a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a Fellow at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Center for Arctic Study & Policy. Captain Brigham was a career Coast Guard officer and commanded four cutters including the icebreaker Polar Sea on Arctic & Antarctic expe-ditions. During 2004-09 he was chair of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, is a member of both the National Academies Polar Research Board and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Brigham is a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College He is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research. He authored CIWAG’s Maritime Case Study titled The Russian Maritime Arctic: Region of Great Change in the 21st Century. 

Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg is Senior Research Scientist in the Russia Studies Program at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization, where he has worked since 2000. Dr. Gorenburg is also an associate at the Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and previously served as Executive Director of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). His research interests include the Russian military, Russian foreign policy, and security issues in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Gorenburg is author of Nationalism for the Masses: Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and has been published in journals such as World Politics and Post-Soviet Affairs. He is the editor of Problems of Post-Communism and was previously editor of Russian Politics and Law. Dr. Gorenburg received a B.A. in international relations from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.

James Holmes is a professor of strategy, the inaugural holder of the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy, and a two-time visiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. He is a recipient of the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Medal honoring his research and writing. He previously served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs, where he remains a nonresident fellow. He is a nonresident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, Marine Corps University. A former U.S. Navy surface-warfare officer, he served as a weapons and engineering officer in the battleship Wisconsin, engineering course director at the Surface Warfare Officers School Command, and military professor of strategy at the Naval War College. General Jim Mattis calls him “troublesome.”

Professor David R. Stone, the William E. Odom Professor of Russian Studies, joined the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College in 2015. He received a B.A. from Wabash College and a Ph.D. in history from Yale. He previously taught at Kansas State University. His book “Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union” (2000) won the Shulman Prize of ASEEES and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society. He has also published “A Military History of Russia” (2006) and “The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917” (2015). He edited “The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945” (2010). He is the author of several dozen articles on Russian military history and foreign policy.

Lars Saunes, RADM (Ret), was born in Alesund, Norway. He retired from the Navy from the position as Chief of Royal Norwegian Navy August 2017 and is now CNO Distinguished international fellow at the USNWC. He is a Submariner by trade and has held different command position on Kobben and Ula class submarines. He has been the commander of the Norwegian task group, Chief Naval operations at joint HQ, Commander submarine operating authority, Commandant and commander of the Norwegian Coast guard as well as Chief of the Royal Norwegian Navy. He has served as the head naval section of the Norwegian defense high command/join and the Norwegian defense research Institute. 

Elizabeth Wishnick is an expert on Sino-Russian relations, Chinese foreign policy and Arctic strategy. At CNA, Dr. Wishnick contributes her dual regional expertise on China and Russia, including professional proficiency in both languages, to research and analysis of Xi Jinping’s Risk-Taking, Sino-Russian Military Cooperation, Chinese and Russian Disinformation, and China’s Arctic policy. Wishnick also is a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She is the author of China’s Risk China’s Risk: Oil, Water, Food and Regional Security, forthcoming Columbia University Press, and Mending Fences: Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (University of Washington Press, 2001, 2014), three monographs for the US Army War College, and more than sixty academic and policy articles, as well as a policy blog www.chinasresourcerisks.com. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University, and a B.A. from Barnard College.

Peter Zwack, Brig. Gen. USA (Ret.), served as the United States Senior Defense Official and Attache to the Russian Federation. His personal interactions with Russian defense, security, academia, policy, veterans, and private citizens has encompassed the recent strife in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. BG Zwack served 34 years as a Military Intelligence and Eurasian Foreign Area Officer serving in West Germany, South Korea, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Russia. He has also served as the Senior Russia-Eurasia Fellow at the Institute of National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, and as an Adjunct Fellow at the Pell Center, Salve Regina University. the Joint Chief’s of Staff “Action Officer of the Year” in 1999 and proudly wears the Ranger Tab and Airborne Wings. Retired in 2015, he served as the Senior Russia-Eurasia Fellow at the Institute of National Strategic Studies, National Defense University and is also an Adjunct Fellow at the Pell Center, Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. As such, he regularly consults, writes and lectures.