Samantha Power has played a significant role in shaping the global politics of the last decade. From 2013 to 2017, Power was the US permanent representative to the United Nations. In this capacity, she also served as a member of President Obama’s cabinet. She took part in negotiating some of the toughest sanctions on North Korea in recent years, helped establish new international laws aimed at financially crippling ISIS, and was the public face of the United States’ opposition to Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine and Syria. Before becoming an ambassador to the UN, from 2009 to 2013 Power was the special assistant to the president and senior director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council. She began her career as a journalist, reporting from all over the world for outlets suchs as TIME, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. Her writing earned her a National Magazine Award. Power was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is currently Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, as well as Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. She is the author of several books, including A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2002), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003.
