About Dr. Hayden
DEEP EXPERTISE MEETS HUMAN CONSEQUENCES
In 1978, during my final exam in a university course on energy systems, I powered up the nuclear research reactor at the University of Texas at Austin. As the chain reaction reached criticality, the reactor glowed blue with Cherenkov radiation before I shut it down safely. I had brought my mother to witness the event. In hindsight, I understand that moment contained the shape of everything that would follow in my career.
SHARING MY EXPERTISE
A fundamental question underlies everything that has driven my work, and it is especially urgent now. Technology can enter our lives in a flash, followed by shockwaves that ripple unevenly across many facets of society. Fortunately, there is a pause—a moment between the flash and the shockwave— during which we can reimagine and reshape our world. How do we see clearly enough to design new systems to manage the tensions between costs, risks, and benefits for human thriving before the shockwave arrives? The flash has already occurred with AI, space security, and climate change. The pause is where we are. That’s not a reason for paralysis. It’s the reason to develop new ways of thinking, build bridges, and foster hope to face these challenges and realize new benefits.
I have spent my career doing just that. My passion is sharing insights through speaking, mentoring, and collaborative research, drawing on lessons from forty years of experience, often as one of the few women in the room. I connect with audiences, from seasoned leaders facing an uncertain future to young people shaping their lives, and I’m here to support you in discovering your path forward.
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My drive to solve problems, both technical and human-centered. The instinct to bring people along rather than leave them outside the door. Accepting the challenge of finding new perspectives on complex issues, sharing what I discovered, and then moving on to increasingly larger issues. All rooted in the belief that the most meaningful work happens where deep expertise meets broad human impact.
Shortly after that exam, I joined Sandia National Laboratories and spent the next forty years addressing the most challenging issues facing our nation and the global community, moving progressively from nuclear reactor safety and nuclear waste management to nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, counterterrorism, asymmetric conflict, space security, and AI. Seeing where the tough problems were, I was drawn to help solve those problems. My perspective, rooted in chaos theory and complexity science focuses on what linear analysis misses.
Ultimately, the solutions always point back to the people inside the system.
ONE BIG QUESTION I’m a systems thinker, and fundamentally, systems are about people. That thinking has taken me from a refugee camp on the Kenya-Somalia border to high-performance computers running weapons codes in New Mexico. And all the spaces in between.
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At the heart of my work is a simple yet powerful question: How do we design systems that not only protect the people inside them but also help them thrive in the face of uncertainty? Surprises happen, and systems fail. I have seen that across all the contexts I have worked, from the technology workbench, to experiments in the field, to decision-making rooms inside the Intelligence Community and halls of national power. The challenge is ensuring people have the tools to anticipate and adapt to the unexpected, and that the systems around them can evolve to meet changing needs and opportunities. My career has focused on building bridges that support individuals and organizations as they navigate the dynamic systems they are part of while also helping those who design and govern them do it better.
THE INSIDE STORIES In 2014, at a Nairobi coffee shop, across a Formica table from Hassan, I listened. He fled Somalia as a toddler, grew up in what was then the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab, earned a university scholarship against extraordinary odds, and was working with NGOs to counter violent extremism among urban refugees. He was doing everything right. But system after system worked against him.
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The AFRICOM peacekeeping effort that pushed Al Shabaab out of Somalia led to retaliatory attacks in Nairobi, where Hassan was living. The government’s counter-terrorism efforts targeted the refugee community in Dadaab, where his family still lived and which he visited regularly. Between these visits and his work for humanitarian NGOs, the government forces viewed him with suspicion, holding him for hours at checkpoints between Dadaab and Nairobi, and ransacking his tiny apartment in Nairobi while he hid behind water tanks on the roof.
Sitting at that table, listening, I realized what no policy brief could fully convey: the real-life experiences of how conflict traps affect those inside them when no one sees the full picture. Even the best intentions can result is a tangled web of unintended human consequences. Each intervention creates new dilemmas, trapping those inside the conflict in patterns with no clear way out. Hassan was one such feedback loop made human, and the individual trying to fix it. Changing patterns means changing systems. I came home from Africa to work on that, but it isn’t where my story begins.
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I am currently a Research Fellow at CISSM, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, having spent decades at Sandia National Laboratories. As a speaker, I draw on my work applying chaos theory and complexity science to national and global security problems to address today’s pressing concerns.
I have the following expertise:
Chaos theory and complexity science / AI governance / Nuclear nonproliferation / Counterterrorism / Space security / Dual-use technology governance / Geopolitical risk / Civil conflict dynamics / Strategic foresight / Women in national security / Peace engineering