Samantha Power

Ambassador Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. From 2021 to 2025, under President Biden, she served as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she led efforts to combat corruption and democratic backsliding, respond to humanitarian crises, and help countries adapt to climate change. Under her leadership, USAID expanded partnerships with the private sector and local organizations, distributed 700 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in developing countries, and supported Ukraine’s economy and energy sector in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

From 2013 to 2017, Ambassador Power served as a member of President Obama’s cabinet and the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where she worked to advance human rights, address conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, and strengthen international measures to combat ISIS and North Korean nuclear proliferation. From 2009 to 2013, she worked at the National Security Council (NSC) as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Earlier in her career, she was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and worked as a freelance war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the New York Times bestsellers, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide and The Education of an Idealist, she has twice been named to TIME magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People.” She and her husband Cass Sunstein have two teenage children.