Lauren Bean Buitta is the founder and CEO of Girl Security, a national nonprofit preparing girls and women to shape the future of national security. Through workforce development, mentorship, and participatory intelligence, Girl Security equips young people to contribute their skills and insights to the decisions shaping their communities and the country.

Before founding Girl Security, Lauren spent more than a decade as a management consultant, providing strategic and analytical guidance on local policy issues, including exclusionary land-use practices and racial segregation in Chicago. From 2002 to 2007, she served as a national security policy analyst at a Chicago-based think tank, specializing in national security law.

Lauren was named a 2026 Young Futures Innovator through the “Oops!... AI Did It Again” Challenge and received the 2026 Stephenie Foster Advocate of the Year Award. In 2025, she was recognized as a Woman of Worth by the Chicago City Clerk. She was also named one of Security Magazine’s “Most Influential People in Security” in 2022 and one of InStyle’s “50 Women Making the World a Better Place” in 2021. Lauren is a recipient of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy’s 21st Century Leader Award and a member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council.

Lauren has held fellowships and leadership appointments with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Truman National Security Project, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

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