Idealism in action

Born in Ireland in 1970, Samantha Power moved to the US with her family when she was nine. She has degrees from Yale and Harvard and began her career as a journalist, reporting on conflict in Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

From 2009 to 2013 she served on the National Security Council as special assistant to the US president and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights, focusing on atrocity prevention, UN reform, LGBT and women’s rights, the promotion of religious freedom and protection of religious minorities, and the prevention of human trafficking.

From 2013 to 2017 Power served as the 28th US permanent representative to the UN, as well as a member of president Barack Obama’s cabinet. She became the public face of US opposition to Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria, negotiated the toughest sanctions in a generation against North Korea, lobbied to secure the release of political prisoners, helped build new international law to cripple Islamic State’s financial networks, and supported Obama’s actions to end the Ebola crisis.

She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School. She is the Anna Lindh professor of the practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and William D Zabel professor of practice in human rights at Harvard Law School.