Celebrating Women Leaders at NETL - Allyn Milojevich

While she hasn’t been at NETL for a very long time, Allyn Milojevich has many years of dynamic experience with DOE. After earning both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in analytical chemistry from Washington and Lee University and Virginia Tech, as well as a doctorate in political science with a focus on international related and public policy from the University of Tennessee, Milojevich started her career in 2012 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

At ORNL, Milojevich was the first postdoc in the Global Security directorate, serving for one year as president of the Oak Ridge Postdoc Association. She then joined the Y-12 National Security Complex where she learned uranium processing and nuclear weapons, transitioning that knowledge to vital nonproliferation, intelligence and national security work.

Milojevich spent the first two years of the pandemic in Washington, D.C., as the technical advisor for NA-24, Nonproliferation and Arms Control. She was the White House National Safety Council DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration lead for the countering biological threats workstream, led the DOE team for the interagency working group on chemical and biological weapons interdiction, as well as the nuclear interdiction teams.

She was a licensing officer and represented the department to the state-led dual-use licensing work where she kicked off $1.7 million in projects related to studying potential verification of the Biological Weapons Convention. Later, she represented the department on U.S. Delegations to both the United Nations Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference and the Australia Group international regimes meetings.

She joined NETL in August 2023 where she currently serves on the lab leadership team as the export control and technology sensitivity officer based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In short, Milojevich’s job is to protect people and to protect the Lab. Before this position, she had always wanted a federal government service job, but thought it was something she would have to do in the distant future. When the opportunity to join NETL arose, she jumped at the opportunity.

As the only quantitative science staff member with experience in intelligence, she regularly travels to D.C. for classified meetings related to research security, counterintelligence and related efforts to raise the profile of NETL and the subject matter expertise they represent in the department. She also uses these briefings to recommend infosec security postures for programs that are new efforts to NETL and require additional expansion, training and awareness.

Milojevich was previously the president of the Institute of Nuclear Material Management (INMM) Central Region Chapter and is currently the vice-president of the INMM Northeast Region Chapter.

When not working, she tries to keep two rambunctious boys alive, Isaac who is 11 and Daniel who is 9. Milojevich said that her main goal in life is to leave the world a better place than how she found it for her children and future generations. In her spare time, she also enjoys reading comics, listening to audio drama podcasts and playing Dungeons and Dragons or other overly complicated board games.

No matter where Milojevich was working, she said that she has always wanted to make room at the table for everyone to be included. When she first started in 2012, she said there were many times where she would enter a room and she was the only woman. She said it is getting better, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

“What we should do as women, is build [metaphorical] ladders,” explained Milojevich. “That way, we can pull up other women and they can also use those ladders so that more women can get into organic leadership positions in the future.”

Her main hope is that one day everyone, including women and other minority groups, will have equal representation in every field across the board.

Overall, Milojevich believes that Women’s History Month is a great opportunity for everyone to reflect on where we have been as a society and where we are going in the future as time progresses.

Allyn Milojevich