Associate Director, Homeland Security Policy Institute
The George Washington University
Email: mcaslc@gwumc.edu
As HSPI's Associate Director, Sharon helps lead the Institute’s policy, research, and education initiatives. She has served as principal or contributing author of numerous reports, articles, and testimonies on a range of homeland security issues including counter-radicalization, WMD terrorism, cybersecurity, emergency preparedness and response, and homeland security curriculum development. Sharon acts as Senior Advisor to The George Washington University’s Center for Preparedness & Resilience, and manages HSPI’s Senior Fellows Program. She also currently serves as Preceptor for HSPI’s Presidential Administrative Fellow.
Prior to joining HSPI in 2005, Sharon served as security policy advisor to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Her portfolio took her to a dozen countries in Europe and Asia, where she supported the Minister in bilateral and multilateral business including NATO. Her government experience spans work at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, including Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Strategic Information Unit; and Industry, Science and Technology Canada. Prior to 9/11, she spent two years in the non-profit sector, focusing on homeland defense issues, at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.
Educated and trained in five countries and two languages, Sharon holds a law degree (J.D.) from the University of Toronto and a Master's degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge. She clerked for Justice Joseph T. Robertson, then of the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Toronto, where she was the recipient (co-winner) of the John H. Moss Scholarship for the best all-round student graduating from the Faculty of Arts and Science. She was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist in Ontario.
Early in her career, Sharon was selected to participate in internships, and summer programs and postings, with United Nations Offices in New York and Geneva; the Legislature of the Province of Ontario; and the New York City-based law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. During law school, she spent a semester abroad at the Pantheon-Assas Law Faculty (Paris II), where she pursued coursework in international, European Union, and French civil law. She has also completed ten courses towards a Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University.
Sharon served as a subject matter expert for the Homeland Security Advisory Council, Report of the Future of Terrorism Task Force, January 2007. Her publications include The Homeland Security Council: Considerations for the Future (2009); NETworked Radicalization: A Counter-Strategy (2007); Out of the Shadows: Getting Ahead of Prisoner Radicalization (2006); Regionalizing Homeland Security: Unifying National Preparedness and Response (2006); Empowering America: A Proposal for Enhancing Regional Preparedness (2006); Terrorism Risk Insurance: Assessing TRIA and the Way Forward (2005); Combating Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Terrorism: A Comprehensive Strategy (2001); and Cyber Threats and Information Security: Meeting the 21st Century Challenge (2001).
Sharon has acted as Deputy Editor of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and Associate Editor of the University of Toronto Law Review. She is a former member of Women in Government Relations, a non-partisan professional association, and served on their Homeland Security Task Force in 2008.