At the Conference

Ruth Mukwana is a Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in New York. She’s also a fiction writer She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), a 2022 Bennington Fellow and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow. Her short stories have appeared in several magazines including Solstice, Consequence, and Black Warriors Review (BWR) where her story, “Taboo” was a runner-up in the BWR 2017 fiction contest. She lives with her daughter in New York and co-produces a podcast, Stories and Humanitarian Action (SAHA) that investigates how storytelling can raise awareness and galvanize action to address the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises.

Dr. Jacqueline Whitt is the Chief Learning Officer and the Director of the Organizational Learning Unit in the Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State. There, she is leading the writing and publication of the first-ever doctrine for public diplomacy and leading a new unit to support learning for organizations and individuals for public diplomacy to remain relevant and adaptable in a complex  and changing information environment. Previously, Dr. Whitt was appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security Studies (2020-2022) and as Associate Professor of Strategy at the US Army War College from 2016-2022. She also served as the Editor in Chief of WAR ROOM and as the elected Faculty Council Chair. Before her appointment at the USAWC, she was on the faculty of the Air War College (Montgomery, AL) in the Department of Strategy from 2012-2016 and the United States Military Academy (West Point, NY) in the Department of History from 2008-2012. Jackie volunteered with American Model United Nations from 2003-2022, serving as a committee chair, on the Executive Committee for six years including as President of the General Assembly and twice as Secretary-General; in 2015 she joined the Executive Office as the Associate Executive Director.  Her Bachelor of Arts is from Hollins University (Roanoke, VA) in History and International Studies, and she earned her Master of Arts (2005) and Doctorate of Philosophy (2008) in Military and American History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, and currently lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with her two cats, General Sherman and Admiral Farragut (the Joint Chiefs of Cats) and tweets as @notabattlechick.