Charles Mahaffey

Charles Mahaffey is the Deputy Assistant Secretary (Acting) for Nonproliferation Policy in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the United States Department of State. A member of the Bureau leadership, ADAS Mahaffey oversees the United States’ involvement in multilateral approaches to global nonproliferation challenges, as well as in international efforts to maintain the highest standards of nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation. ADAS Mahaffey joined the State Department as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2004, and initially focused on U.S.-Russian arms control issues. After moving to the ISN bureau in 2006, he has supported ISN work on a range of challenges including: pursuing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; supporting U.S. engagement with China on strategic and nonproliferation issues; strengthening nonproliferation and security cooperation with Japan; coordinating U.S. engagement with Myanmar on nonproliferation issues; promoting the safe and secure expansion of civil nuclear power globally, and; advancing U.S. nonproliferation and security objectives in regional organizations around the world. From July 2017-June 2018, through the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program, he was detailed to the Japanese Government to improve coordination between the United States and Japan on issues relating to nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Before joining the U.S. Government, he served a fellowship as a political officer at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in the WMD Branch of the Department for Disarmament Affairs. There he focused on nuclear weapons issues and on improving coordination between member states and the IAEA. Prior to that, he spent six years living in Japan, first in a small town outside of Nagasaki where for three years he helped to develop a nuclear disarmament education program for junior high school students. He then spent three years as a consultant for a major Japanese semiconductor company. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Arizona, and an MA in International Policy Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, with a focus on Nonproliferation Studies and Japanese.