Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York, NY

Ambassador Samantha Power is the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) and a member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet. At the United Nations, Ambassador Power works to advance U.S. interests, promote and defend universal values, and address pressing global challenges to global peace, security, and prosperity. Prior to this role, Ambassador Power served as Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Staff at the White House. In this role she focused on issues including UN reform; LGBT and women’s rights; the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities; human trafficking; and democracy and human rights.

Before joining the U.S. government, Ambassador Power was the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, teaching courses on U.S. foreign policy, human rights, and UN reform. She was also the founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. Ambassador Power began her career as a journalist, reporting from places such as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and contributed regularly to The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker Magazine.

Ambassador Power immigrated to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine and became a U.S. citizen in 1993. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of two books and has received many accolades and awards. She received a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.