37 Facts About Samantha Power

Samantha Power was the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017.

Samantha Power was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008.

Samantha Power joined the Obama State Department transition team in late November 2008.

Samantha Power served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from January 2009 to February 2013.

Samantha Power is a subject of the 2014 documentary Watchers of the Sky, which explains the contribution of several notable people, including Samantha Power, to the cause of genocide prevention.

Samantha Power won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, a study of the US foreign policy response to genocide.

Samantha Power was awarded the 2015 Barnard Medal of Distinction and the 2016 Henry A Kissinger Prize.

Samantha Power was born in London, the daughter of Irish parents Vera Delaney, a nephrologist and field-hockey international player, and Jim Samantha Power, a dentist and piano player.

Samantha Power has recalled reading Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew mystery novels while accompanying her father to a local pub in Dublin.

Samantha Power attended Lakeside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was a member of the cross country team and the basketball team.

Samantha Power's book framed genocide as a problem that the United States was involved in as an onlooker rather than a perpetrator or enabler.

Samantha Power has been a longtime advocate of the use of armed force by the United States in response to genocide abroad.

From 1998 to 2002, Samantha Power served as the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where she later served as the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy.

In 2004, Samantha Power was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world that year.

Samantha Power served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, but resigned during the primaries.

Samantha Power was an early and outspoken supporter of Barack Obama.

In February and March 2008, Samantha Power began an international tour to promote her book, Chasing the Flame.

Samantha Power was confirmed as UN ambassador by the US Senate on August 1,2013, by a vote of 87 to 10, and was sworn in a day later by the Vice President.

Samantha Power has been criticized for her openness to military interventions in Libya, Syria, and Yemen on perceived humanitarian grounds, which critics say led to the loss of lives and furthered extremism.

Yet, in her 2019 memoir, The Education of an Idealist, Samantha Power downplays her role in the bloodshed that followed in Libya, although she still laments Obama's inaction earlier in the Syrian Civil War.

Chemi Shalev wrote that individuals have described Samantha Power as being pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli, on the basis of statements which she made in a 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler.

In 2014, speaking on the crisis in Ukraine, Ambassador Samantha Power, told reporters that Washington was "gravely disturbed" by reports of Russian military deployments into the Crimea.

Samantha Power declined to characterize Russian military actions when asked if they constituted aggression.

Samantha Power called for an independent international mediation mission to be quickly dispatched to Ukraine.

In March 2015, Samantha Power described defense cuts planned by Europe and countries such as Britain as "very concerning" in light of the "diffuse" challenges facing the world, such as the Ebola crisis in west Africa and the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Samantha Power flew to Brussels to urge European nations to abide by a NATO pledge to devote to defense at least two percent of their national budget, and she suggested that their current spending already risked being insufficient.

Samantha Power faced criticism for her silence on Obama's failure to recognize the Armenian genocide, especially after its 100th anniversary in 2015.

Samantha Power described the day during which she gave birth to her son Declan in 2009 right after her failure to change Obama's decision as "an example of loneliness" she experienced at the White House.

Samantha Power apologized for the Administration's failure on Twitter in 2017.

In June 2015, Samantha Power spoke to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee while negotiations were taking place with Iran regarding granting relief of sanctions on the country in return for them scaling back their nuclear program.

Samantha Power told the Committee that the US would retain the ability to reinstate sanctions against Iran without unanimous support from the UN Security Council, though she said she could not provide details until a deal was finalized.

Samantha Power supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Samantha Power was awarded the Ulysses Medal by University College Dublin in November 2017.

Samantha Power serves as a senior member, board member, and director of the new International Peace and Security Project.

Samantha Power assumed leadership of USAID amidst its efforts to disburse massive amounts of foreign aid during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Samantha Power faced criticism from within her administration for her silence amidst accusations of genocide in Gaza, given her background as a scholar of the subject.

On July 4,2008, Samantha Power married law professor Cass Sunstein, whom she met while working on the Obama campaign.