Overview

Gender

female

Kirstjen Michele Nielsen was sworn in as the sixth Secretary of Homeland Security and held the position for two years. In that role, she was responsible for all operational, policy, and legal matters, including counterterrorism, cybersecurity, border security, and biological and nuclear threats to the homeland. She previously served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff to the then-Secretary of Homeland Security.

Nielsen has also served as the Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Risk and Resilience, Chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council for Strategic and Global Security Programs at Penn State, Senior Fellow at the George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, and a Safety and Security Advisory Board Member for the Center for Naval Analysis. She is a Member of the State Bar of Texas. She holds a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia’s School of Law.

On blockchain and crypto, Nielsen had this to say, “I’m fascinated and very excited by the DeFi evolution,” Nielsen said in an interview. “What we have been missing in DeFi is a layer of trust. Astra’s decentralized legal layer will assure regulatory compliance and enable efficient and fair dispute resolution.”