Samantha Power

In the memo she comments: "Barack Obama's judgment is right; the conventional wisdom is wrong. We need a new era of tough, principled and engaged American diplomacy to deal with 21st-century challenges."

Samantha Jane Power (born September 21, 1970) is an American journalist, diplomat, and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.

Raised in Ireland until she was nine, Power lived in the Dublin district of Castleknock and was schooled in Mount Anville Montessori Junior School, Goatstown, Dublin, until her mother emigrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1979.

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

She subsequently received her B.A. degree in History from Yale University, where she was a member of Aurelian Honor Society, and her J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

In 1993, at the age of 23, she became a U.S. citizen.

After graduating from Yale, Power worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a researcher for Carnegie's then-President Morton Abramowitz.

From 1993 to 1996, she worked as a war correspondent, covering the Yugoslav Wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic.

In 1998, she became the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where she later served as the first Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy until 2009.

From 1998 to 2002, 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.

When she returned to the United States, she attended Harvard Law School, receiving her J.D. in 1999.

The following year, her first edited work, Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact (edited with Graham Allison) was published.

Her first book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, grew out of a paper she wrote while attending law school; it helped create the doctrine of "responsibility to protect."

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

The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize in 2003.

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

Power spent 2005–06 working in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as a foreign policy fellow, where she was credited with sparking and directing Obama's interest in the Darfur conflict.

In fall 2007, she began writing a regular column for Time.

In August 2007, Power wrote a memo titled "Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need", in which she provided one of the first comprehensive statements of Obama's approach to foreign policy.

She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008, when she resigned from his presidential campaign after apologizing for referring to then-Senator Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during an interview, thinking she was off the record.

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

Her other books include Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (2008), The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrook in the World (co-edited with Derek Chollet, 2011), and The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir (2019).

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

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

She 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.

In 2009 President Obama appointed her to a position on the National Security Council and in 2013 he appointed her as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet-rank position.

Power was an early and outspoken supporter of Barack Obama.

When she joined the Obama campaign as a foreign policy advisor, Men's Vogue described her as a "Harvard brainiac who can boast both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot (ask George Clooney). Now the consummate outsider is working on her inside game: D.C. politics."

In April 2012, Obama chose her to chair a newly formed Atrocities Prevention Board.

As U.N. ambassador, Power's office focused on such issues as United Nations reform, women's rights and LGBT rights, religious freedom and religious minorities, refugees, human trafficking, human rights, and democracy, including in the Middle East and North Africa, Sudan, and Myanmar.

She is considered to have been a key figure in the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya.

She previously served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017.

Power is a member of the Democratic Party.

Power began her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars before entering academic administration.

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

She has also been awarded the 2015 Barnard Medal of Distinction and the 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize.

In January 2021, Joe Biden nominated Power to head the United States Agency for International Development.

Her nomination was confirmed by the US Senate on April 28, 2021, by a vote of 68–26.

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

In 2016, she was listed as the 41st-most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.