Girl Security founder and CEO, Lauren Buitta
Photo Credit: Maureen Ford
National Security is one of the largest fields of employment in the United States. However, one prominent group has long been underrepresented in the sector. According to Girl Security founder and CEO, Lauren Buitta, women make up 23% of FBI Special Agents, 25% of the cybersecurity workforce, 17.8% of CIA agents, 14.4% of active duty military, 28% of the STEM/Security workforce, 14% of International Relations professors, less than 40% of leadership in the U.S. State Department and only 26% at the Pentagon.
“A nation is only as secure as its populations,” remarked Buitta in our recent interview. “When you have vast populations who are not secure, there’s sort of a fundamental flaw in how we think about national security.” It’s a flaw that’s only exacerbated when a limited amount of viewpoints are involved.
“How national security has been defined for nearly a century has been through the lens of primarily white men,” stressed Buitta as she highlighted the significance of gaining invaluable information and strategy through the expressed inclusion of various intersectionalities. “The stories of girls and gender minorities in our programs are the stories that are missing from our decision-making.”
As the Girl Security website states, “Girls and women grow up in a world in which they are taught to fear everything, but secured from nothing. From childhood to adulthood, they devise responses to an array of threats to their personal security.”
Girl Security is the only nonprofit organization dedicated to forging equity in national security by utilizing unparalleled youth insights. Serving girls, women, and gender minorities ages 14-26, civic empowerment is a core motivating purpose of their work. Founded in 2016 on foundational values that include tolerance, purpose, and resilience, Girl Security is serious about shedding light on the gender gap in national security and finding tangible solutions for placing more women in the workforce.
An Identity-Centered Approach
Keeping diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) central to its mission, Girl Security prioritizes the service of underrepresented communities. Smartly catering to groups that include women and girls of color, communities impacted by low opportunity zones and targeted by violence, trans girls and women, and queer and nonbinary people who present as femme, the organization strives never to leave anyone behind. As they develop solutions to some of the most pressing security challenges facing our world today, they’re also engaging a future workforce that accurately reflects the population it was designed to protect — everyone.
“I would say that there’s no one size fits all to that approach,” stated Buitta when asked about the structure of Girl Security’s identity-centered work. Grounded in the belief that women’s firsthand experiences navigating their own personal security equips them with insights and perspectives critical to informing decisions about national security, the program’s greatest asset lies in its ability to include and nurture a host of varied voices. Leaning on a combination of mentorship and sponsorship, Buitta explained how the organization meets each young person exactly where they are, encouraging them to lead with their individual stories.
By helping participants develop professional and substantive skills and providing the necessary workforce training and professional pathways they require, Girl Security is effectively democratizing defense through the lens of social change and the use of strategic economic mobility.
Redefining The Identity of Leadership
A large part of Girl Security’s mission is allowing women and girls to see that there is a place for them in a space where they’ve been largely invisible for decades. Named by Security Magazine as one of 2022’s Most Influential People in Security, Buitta shared how she’d been through a “baptism by fire” in her early years working as a national security think tank analyst following the September 11th attacks.
“My college education didn’t prepare me for national security,” Buitta said, reflecting on her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Government from Boston College. “I quickly learned that national security was this powerful political realm, responsible for consequential decisions like going to war, and also an employment sector where women were grossly underrepresented.”
After spending nearly a decade working as an analyst, Buitta left her position to begin law school after being sexually assaulted on the job, later founding Chicago-based Stele Consulting firm during her attendance, which provided advisory support to clients on local policy issues, including exclusionary land use and racial segregation. Through this work Buitta recognized the opportunity to merge the backward-looking assessment lens of civil rights and systemic discrimination with the forward-thinking preparation practices of national security to form the foundation of what is now Girl Security.
When confronted with the mass amounts of disinformation stemming from the 2016 election cycle that specifically weaponized race and gender narratives, Buitta finally understood how to execute her vision. She started by reaching out to communities across the country to begin conversations on industry perceptions. One main fact emerged — girls had very little exposure to feminine archetypes in national security and even less understanding of the impact of the field on their personal lives or the available career opportunities and pathways it presented.
One of Buitta’s significant challenges has been bringing forth the level of personal vulnerability required of her to lead by example. “I wasn’t prepared to have to put my own personal experiences out front in the way that I have,” she revealed. “Another challenge is, in society, we don’t often see nonprofits as valuable, or as businesses, even though nonprofits working on economic development or mobility contribute to the greater economy [and] social good.”
Mentioning the statistic that women constitute less than 25% of nonprofit CEOs despite making up nearly 75% of the workforce, Buitta admits she’ll probably be working on the balance of her public work and personal narrative for the rest of her life. Nonetheless, however steep, she views the uphill battle of her leadership visibility as positively transformative. “It’s reminded me about why we’re doing this work.”
Coming out of the pandemic as a mother, caregiver, and CEO, Buitta recognizes the limitations around what she’s able to strategize and scale in comparison to some of her counterparts who’ve been “going back to business as usual.” But her focus remains on finding a balance between managing the organization, being home and present for loved ones, setting boundaries, and taking care of mental health.
Forging A Sustainable Mission
Currently serving over 800 mentees, Buitta asserted that Girl Security’s foremost sustainability strategy is making everyone involved feel as though they truly belong in the organization. “We sort of see our role as creating a space for them to explore their ideas,” she resolved.
Committed to designing approaches that recruit diverse young people into workforces shaped with their help and best interests in mind, Girl Security is transforming workplace cultures and stomping out the illusion of false inclusion practices that expect assimilation. “It’s not just getting more girls, women and gender minorities into the door or onramps into these pathways,” Buitta emphatically posed. “It’s working alongside them to think about ‘how we actually rebuild these workplaces to innovate with inclusion at the center.’”
As of last year, the first wave of Girl Security participants were enthusiastically entering the workforce, holding public sector security roles at the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as private sector positions, specialized think tanks, and roles developing the responsible tech industry.
For those interested in moving into any new industry or career, Buitta emphasized the importance of finding a community of supportive people who can champion your interests and help identify opportunities. Additionally, searching out programs, like Girl Security, that provides access to dedicated social networks, a definitive knowledge base, and specialized training is a great help. But an even more considerable resource for the culture would be paying it forward once you’re established.
