Wendy Sherman

Wendy Ruth Sherman (born June 7, 1949) is an American diplomat who served as the United States deputy secretary of state from April 2021 to July 2023.

She was a professor of the practice of public leadership and director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, a senior counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group, and a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Sherman, a social worker, served as the director of EMILY's List, the director of Maryland's office of child welfare, and the founding president of the Fannie Mae Foundation.

Sherman attended Smith College from 1967 to 1969, and graduated from Boston University in 1971 in the field of sociology and urban studies.

In 1976, she earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland.

Sherman, a social worker, began her career working to help women who had been abused and people in poverty.

She credits her skills in negotiations to her social work experience and education saying: “For me that core set of skills was in community organizing and clinical skills and I only half joke that those clinical skills have been very effective with both dictators and members of Congress.

. . it does help to understand interpersonal relations and how people think and feel and have different sets of interests.”

As part of the neighborhood movement, she worked as a social activist, alongside activists like Geno Baroni and Arthur Naparstek on problems related to low-income housing.

Sherman's early jobs were in partisan politics and social work.

These included working as the director of EMILY's List, which provides money to pro-choice, female, Democratic political candidates.

She also worked as director of Maryland's office of child welfare and as the president and CEO of the Fannie Mae Foundation, an arm of Fannie Mae.

Wendy Sherman was the Clinton administration's policy coordinator for North Korea.

The Clinton Administration had first arrived at the 1994 Agreed Framework under which North Korea agreed to freeze and dismantle its nuclear weapons program, including its main reactor at Yongbyon (Sherman continues to defend the 1994 deal and her involvement in it, stating that "during the Clinton administration not one ounce of plutonium was added to the North Korean stockpile").

From April 1996, Sherman became founding president and CEO of the newly created Fannie Mae Foundation, which was developed by Fannie Mae and endowed with $350 million in Fannie stock, with the goal of promoting home ownership and mortgages across wider sectors of American society.

She has also been a member of the operating committee of Fannie Mae.

At Fannie Mae, she set in place the groundwork for the newly recreated foundation.

In 1996, she described her mission as the first president of the Fannie Mae Foundation:

"In other words, it is broadly reaching out to American citizens and saying to them: 'You can have access to affordable housing. You might be able to get started on the path to homeownership, and we can at least give you some information that might help you get on your way.'

During the Clinton administration, she served as counselor of the United States Department of State from 1997 to 2001.

She was also a special advisor to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the North Korea policy coordinator.

In the latter role, she was instrumental in negotiations related to North Korea's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.

In 1999, James Baker criticized her team's negotiating strategy with North Korea as "appeasement" that was rewarding the North Korean regime for minimal concessions, and he said that as a result they would fail to prevent their nuclear program.

Sherman later headed North Korean negotiation policy until 2001.

In 2001, following years of secret negotiations with Kim Jong Il, North Korea had promised not to produce, test or deploy missiles with a range of more than 300 miles.

That offer would prevent North Korea from fielding missiles that could strike the United States.

North Korea also offered to halt the sale of missiles, missile components, technology and training.

In 2001, in a New York Times op-ed, Sherman recommended that the only way the US deal could deal with North Korea's disputed programs and prevent them achieving a nuclear capability was through diplomacy, writing that Kim Jong Il now "appears ready to make landmark commitments."

She advised Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign, and she served with Thomas Donilon as an agency review lead for the State Department in the Obama presidential transition.

She has been a vice chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, Albright's international strategic consulting firm, since the group's formation in 2009.

Sherman served under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as under secretary of state for political affairs from 2011 to 2015.

She was the fourth-ranking official in the U.S. Department of State.

In that role, Sherman was the lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal.

In 2011, John Bolton said that Wendy Sherman had been central in forming a policy on North Korea that was "nothing less than appeasement."

In 2015 she was named as one of The Forward 50.

Sherman also sits on the Atlantic Council's board of directors.

After winning the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden nominated Sherman to serve as United States Deputy Secretary of State, under Antony Blinken.

Sherman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a Jewish family.

Her father, Malcolm Sherman, a veteran of the U.S. Marines, was originally from Philadelphia.

While she was in elementary school, her family moved to Pikesville, Maryland, and Sherman attended Pikesville High School.