22 Facts About Sarah Sewall

Sarah Sewall was born on August 21,1961 and is Executive Vice President for Policy at In-Q-Tel, a strategic investor for the national security community.

Sarah Sewall spent ten years as a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she directed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Sarah Sewall did graduate work on strategic and international studies at New College, Oxford.

Sarah Sewall worked as a military analyst for the House Democratic Study Group before becoming Senate Majority Leader George J Mitchell's Senior Foreign Policy Advisor in 1987.

For six years, Sarah Sewall advised Mitchell and drafted legislation to halt US nuclear testing, halt US support for Cambodian rebels, oppose chemical weapons use in Iraq, and reform the War Powers Resolution.

In 1993, Sarah Sewall moved to the Pentagon, serving as the inaugural Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Peace Enforcement Policy.

Sarah Sewall built the peacekeeping office mission, staff, and operations to provide equipment and services to the United Nations.

Sarah Sewall led Defense Department policy during the expansion of UN peacekeeping in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia.

In 2000, Sarah Sewall transitioned to academia, where she helped shape the field of civilian security.

Sarah Sewall joined Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she launched the Project on the Means of Intervention, a ground-breaking forum for military and humanitarian actors to engage contentious questions about the conduct of war.

Sarah Sewall was the Minerva Chair at the US Naval War College in 2012.

Sarah Sewall is best known for her research on minimizing the effects of war upon civilian populations and her work with military actors to put these ideas into practice.

Sarah Sewall subsequently launched the MARO Project, a partnership with the US Army Peacekeeping Institute, to develop an operational concept for intervening to halt mass atrocities.

Sarah Sewall was an early foreign policy advisor to then-candidate Barack Obama and served as a national surrogate during the 2008 campaign.

Sarah Sewall helped lead his pre-election transition effort and following the election directed the reviews of all national security, foreign policy, intelligence and development agencies before returning to Harvard.

President Obama nominated Sarah Sewall to be Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights and she was confirmed on February 11,2014.

Sarah Sewall was responsible for integrating a reconfigured team of 5 bureaus and 3 offices with widely disparate missions, some 2,000 employees, and over $5 billion annual budget.

An early strategic review process produced a joint J mission and three key priorities that guided Sarah Sewall's tenure: preventing the spread of violent extremism, preventing mass atrocities, and advancing the rule of law and anticorruption.

Sarah Sewall is credited with spearheading the Obama administration's 2015 Countering Violent Extremism policy and the associated White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism hosted by the State Department.

Sarah Sewall consistently emphasized the importance of governance and human rights in the counterterrorism battle.

Sarah Sewall strengthened the State Department's ability to understand and prevent conflict, particularly mass killings of civilians.

Sarah Sewall worked to elevate corruption as a US foreign policy priority and security issue.