First-Year Fellow Mentor: Mary Beth Nikitin '96

The First-Year Fellows program is a unique opportunity for first-year students to engage meaningfully in public policy early in their Dartmouth careers. Each year, around 20 students are selected and placed in fellowships with Dartmouth alumni in Washington, D.C., who are willing to take on a significant mentoring role.

"I chose to mentor because of my own experience as a Rockefeller Center Public Policy Fellow in 1995. That experience expanded my knowledge of international security issues and sparked my interest in nuclear nonproliferation, which I continued on to study in graduate school. I hope that by being a mentor, I can give back what I so generously received myself to the next generation of Dartmouth grads." --Mary Beth Nikitin '96, First-Year Fellow mentor

Mary Beth Nikitin is a Specialist in Nonproliferation in the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division at the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Library of Congress. She has worked at CRS since September of 2007.  Nikitin’s research covers nuclear, biological and chemical weapons nonproliferation issues including nuclear security, nonproliferation/threat reduction assistance, and nuclear energy cooperation. She has authored recent reports on Syria’s Chemical Weapons, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons and U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements. This Summer, Nikitin is serving as a mentor to Rohit Bhatia '17 through the First-Year Fellows Program.

Before joining CRS, Nikitin was a Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). At CSIS, she coordinated the Strengthening the Global Partnership project which worked to broaden support for cooperative threat reduction and nuclear terrorism prevention worldwide. Previously, she was a Research Associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, CA from 2001 to 2003. She worked as an intern at the Department for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations in New York in Autumn 1999. She earned a B.A. with majors in Government and French at Dartmouth College in 1996 and a Masters in International Policy Studies and Certificates in Nonproliferation Studies and Conflict Resolution from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2000.

Mary Beth Nikitin has mentored the following First-Year Fellows:

• Taylor Lane '20
• Ryan Spector '19
• David Tramonte '18
• Rohit Bhatia '17