We at Just Security could not be more excited to welcome our new Washington Editor, Viola Gienger, as the latest addition to the Just Security team.

Viola is a veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering foreign affairs, U.S. foreign and defense policy, international security, and development as a news reporter and editor.

Before coming to Just Security, Gienger was a senior editor/writer at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, where she worked on issues bedeviling the world’s most violent conflict zones, including violent extremism, gender, and religion, and where she conducted research and program strategy work on the Ukraine/Russia crisis. Prior to that, she covered the State Department and the Pentagon for Bloomberg News.

Gienger will based in Washington, DC, where she will be helping maintain, and dare we say increase the outstanding content from Just Security‘s guest authors and editorial board members as well as writing her own pieces covering crucial developments in the U.S. capital and beyond.

No doubt, Gienger’s experience and expertise will be invaluable to Just Security‘s coverage of the day’s most pressing security, human rights, and international legal issues. But her perspective is not limited to covering these issues from Washington. Per her bio:

Gienger earlier lived and worked for seven years in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, five years managing training programs and consulting for independent media in transition, and two years as a freelance journalist. She has reported from more than 30 countries, including in the Middle East and Asia, and has appeared as a guest commentator and moderator in television, radio and podcasts.

Her freelance work over the years includes guest national security editor at The Cipher Brief, and her writing has been published in Ozy, the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert, the Chicago Tribune, Newhouse’s Religion News Service, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Transitions Online and Al-Monitor.

Once again, we’re thrilled to count Gienger as a member of the Just Security team. You can follow her on Twitter in addition to the webpages of Just Security.