Loraine Rickard-Martin is co-founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of Compliance and Capacity Skills International (CCSI) and Executive Director of CCSI Women. As Board Chair, she provides strategic support and oversight of CCSI’s training programs on compliance with sanctions, strategic trade control and other public and private sector security issues, with an emphasis on women’s leadership in international security. As CCSI Women’s Executive Director, she works to support women international security professionals, to increase their competence through training, and their impact on international peace and security and related economic growth.

As CCSI’s CEO, she co-managed the first United Nations system-wide training on sanctions compliance and implementation (2011-2012) funded by the Government of Canada; co-managed sanctions reform processes such as the High-Level Review of United Nations Sanctions (2915), the follow-on Assessment of the HLR (2017); and co-implemented of the Best Practices Guide for Chairs and Members of UN Sanctions Committees (2018 and 2020), that includes guidance and policy on Gender Equality and UN Sanctions, specifically the risks of limiting UN sanctions to Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV), gender competence in the UN sanctions system; and improving UN sanctions to prevent gender-related threats and violence more effectively.

She implemented the “Workshop on Sanctions and Gender” held in Nairobi in 2019, funded by Global Affairs Canada(GAC) and the Government of the Netherlands. She advised the African Union’s Peace and Security Council on sanctions issues with the drafting of an AU sanctions manual (2012).

Prior to co-founding CCSI in 2011, she served the United Nations for over three decades, including 15 years as senior political affairs officer and sanctions committee secretary in the Security Council Affairs Division of the Department of Political Affairs, New York, advising sanctions committee chairs and members, supporting teams of sanctions monitors, and participating in reform processes to refine the sanctions tool.

She was Secretary of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2003-2004). She lectured on United Nations sanctions at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and taught an intensive ten-week course for diplomats at Columbia University (2010-2013). She is the co-author with Enrico Carisch and Shawna Meister of “The Evolution of UN Sanctions: From a Tool of Warfare to a Tool of Peace, Security and Human Rights” (2017), and has co-authored other articles and publications on international sanctions, including, most recently, “United Nations Sanctions – Through Gender Lens” in “Multilateral Sanctions Dissected: Lessons Learned from Margaret Doxey”, Andrea Charron and Clara Portela, eds., (McGill Queens UP, 2021).