Ploughshares Board Chair Terry Gamble Boyer Passes the Baton

Outgoing Chair Terry Gamble Boyer recently ended her term on the Ploughshares board. After 14 years on the Board and six years as Chair, she leaves behind an impressive legacy as a team builder, an advocate and a leader.

As she looks back over her time with the Ploughshares board, a few key memories stand out. “There are several peak moments that are burned into memory,” she says. “The first was just before I joined the Ploughshares board. I attended one of the Washington D.C. briefings for donors (I recommend this to all). It was during the lame duck session of President Obama’s first term, and Ploughshares had put together a broad consortium to advocate senators to ratify the NewSTART treaty.” She reflects on the back-and-forth dealing as negotiators tried to secure the necessary 67 votes in the senate, the moments when it looked like legislative victory was at hand, and then when it looked impossible after GOP Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona withdrew his support. “We were watching dealmaking in the works,” she recalls. “Eventually, the treaty passed, but not without President Obama agreeing to modernize (and thus invest in and prolonging) our nuclear arsenal. Hence the term: ‘trillion-dollar triad.’”

She also recalls when she travelled to Israel with a group of then-Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione. “We were at a convening in Tel Aviv when the news came that Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland was going to provide the last necessary vote to uphold President Obama’s veto of any congressional resolution disapproving the JCPOA or Iran Deal,” she says. “It was doubly moving to see the deal protected while we were in Israel. Although Netanyahu tried to tank the deal, most Israeli security experts—current and former—realized that the agreement would provide more security to Israel as well as to the rest of the world.”

She considers her most significant legacy as tied to a key hiring decision. “By far my lasting legacy was working with the board to hire Emma [Belcher] as President,” she says. “I knew Joe Cirincione was going to retire and was dreading it. I loved working with him, and he’s a hard act to follow. But Emma has brought her own vision, expertise, style and manner as leader of the organization. I have cherished working with her and am so proud of what she’s accomplishing.”

Current Chair Gretchen Hund concurs with the hiring of Dr. Belcher as Gamble Boyer’s most significant legacy but also offers that her predecessor has laid a deep and wide-ranging foundation as the “heart and soul of Ploughshares” during her time as a board member and Chair. She recalls: “the previous Chair, Mary Estrin, got sick and handed over the reins to Terry who took them on and excelled. She shared with me that one of the great lessons she learned from Mary was to always consider questions about the organization and how we should move forward through the lens of ‘is this aligned with and advancing the mission of Ploughshares?’ Terry has been surprised at how helpful this metric has been. Through her term she has witnessed Ploughshares being critically important in supporting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and hosting luminaries such as [former Secretary of State] John Kerry and Beatrice Fihn [who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for spearheading the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)]. Terry has built an exceptional Board and comments from Board members about her stepping down have highlighted her professionalism in running focused meetings where she gives everyone an opportunity to participate but also knows how to keep us on task.” Hund adds that staff have also commented on Gamble Boyer’s ability to take the time to know each staff member and understand what their roles are.

“Let’s face it – it’s hard to be optimistic about much in the world right now,” Gamble Boyer notes, reflecting on the chaotic state of the planet at this juncture. “But I’m by nature a hopeful person. I recognize that, while we might fear the future, we have a poor track record in predicting it. We can’t just wait for our ‘leaders’ to get us to a good place. It has to start with us. And sometimes the world has gotten to a very dark place before the green shoots appear. My strongest hope is that it won’t take a nuclear event before people turn away in revulsion at what these weapons can do—assuming we’ll still have any agency after such a catastrophe. Right now, it’s as if we’re having a picnic on a train track, feeling the vibration and hearing a whistle blow. Let’s get off the tracks. Escalation and provocation are a losing proposition. And deterrence is a slim reed to lean on in the long or even short term.”

As she moves onto other challenges, she notes how important it is to keep up the fight, to take up the baton she’s passing along and to understand how her work and that of her fellow Ploughshares family is ongoing: “To quote Alexei Navalny shortly before his death: ‘You are not allowed to give up.’ Even if success seems incremental or even elusive, we have to have faith in the sum of our efforts. This is both a marathon and a relay race. Your dollars are critical. Your work is critical. Be a part of the community working for peace and security. There really is no better choice.”