Legal Analyst
Legal Analyst

Biography

Chanel Chauvet-Maldonado is an international lawyer working within the Legal Frameworks team of PNNL’s Global Security, Technology, and Policy division as a legal analyst. Chauvet-Maldonado specializes in the analysis of emergent legal and policy issues, in addition to developing and delivering trainings to foreign governments related to the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including arms control, nuclear security and safeguards, and counterproliferation finance. She works to provide capacity-building programs, foreign technical recommendations, and regulatory best practices to improve national legislative frameworks for the security and nonproliferation of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons and materials. She contributes to CBRN and counterproliferation finance projects for the Office of International Nuclear Security under the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency under the Department of Defense, and the Department of State.

Prior to joining PNNL, Chauvet-Maldonado served as the permanent representative of the United Nations Office at Geneva on behalf of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists where she advocated before the Human Rights Council and liaised with foreign stakeholders in high-level discussions. Before that, she worked in the Law and Policy Forum at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, developing the case study supplement accompanying the ICRC’s guidance tool on international humanitarian law for the judicial sector. She also clerked for Honorable Chief Judge Tusan of Fulton County's Superior Court in Atlanta, Georgia, up until her retirement. Her volunteering experience includes serving as the Advisor of the Inclusion in the Profession Committee of the Young Lawyers Division, State Bar of Georgia which accorded her with the 2022 Award for Service to the Profession and as an Executive Committee member of the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict of the American Society of International Law.

Chauvet-Maldonado earned her Master of Laws in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Switzerland, along with a certificate in the same from The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden Law School in The Hague, Netherlands. She also holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Georgia School of Law.

Chauvet-Maldonado is licensed to practice law and is an active member of the Washington, D.C. Bar and the State Bar of Georgia. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, golfing, reading, and traveling.

Research Interest

  • Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive response
  • Comparative law
  • Emerging technologies
  • Foreign policy
  • Human rights
  • Instructional design
  • Laws of war
  • National security
  • Nonproliferation and arms control
  • Regulatory training and development

Education

  • LLM in international humanitarian law and human rights, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
  • JD, University of Georgia
  • BA in sociology and political science, Georgia State University

Publications