Gloria Duffy, President and CEOGloria Duffy is President and CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nation's largest and oldest public affairs forum, founded in 1903 and headquartered in San Francisco. Each year, the Club presents over 400 speeches, panel discussions and debates on a broad range of public policy issues. With 18,700 members, the Club publishes The Commonwealth magazine and broadcasts its programs weekly on public radio, XM satellite radio and commercial stations around the U.S. It is the nation's longest running radio broadcast, begun in 1924. The Club also sponsors public policy projects, currently including Voices of Reform, which works to improve state governance in California.
Dr. Duffy served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Special Coordinator for Cooperative Threat Reduction during the first term of the Clinton Administration. She negotiated the denuclearization and dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet countries of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and provided $1.5 billion in US assistance to those countries.
Dr. Duffy holds Ph.D., M. Phil. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University and an A.B. magna cum laude from Occidental College. She has founded and headed two international affairs organizations, Global Outlook and the World Forum of Silicon Valley. She has served in positions at the Rand Corporation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, the Arms Control Association, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Stanford University.
She is the author/editor of two books, International Arms Control Issues and Agreements (Stanford University Press, 1983) and Compliance and the Future of Arms Control (Ballinger, 1987). Her column, "InSight," appears monthly in The Commonwealth.
Dr. Duffy has served on or chaired the boards of two-dozen national and community organizations. She is currently Chair of the Board of the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation. Created by Congress through the National Science Foundation, CRDF provides $35 million annually, from US government and private foundation sources, to employ former weapons scientists on civilian research projects with American colleagues. CRDF combats the spread of critical scientific knowledge about weapons of mass destruction, as well as contributes to economic development and international scientific cooperation. The Foundation works in the former Soviet countries, Libya, Iraq and other countries of proliferation concern.
Dr. Duffy serves on the Boards of Trustees of Dominican University of California and Occidental College, and the Advisory Board of the Freeman-Spogli Institute of International Studies at Stanford University. She is also a board member of Ploughshares Fund, and several other non-profit organizations.
She is the co-owner of an independent bookstore and art gallery, The McCloud Book Gallery, in McCloud, California (Siskiyou County) and a board member of the McCloud Land and Building Preservation Association.
Dr. Duffy is the recipient of awards including the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service (1995) and the Janet Gray Hayes Award (2002), as the San Jose woman contributing most to the local and global communities.
She has homes in Santa Clara, San Francisco and McCloud, California. Her husband, Rod Diridon, Sr., is Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute and former Chair of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. They have two children, Rod Diridon, Jr. and Mary Diridon.
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