Samantha Power

Samantha Power (born September 21, 1970) is an Irish-born American academic, author and diplomat who currently serves as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

She began her career by covering the Yugoslav Wars as a journalist. From 1998 to 2002 Power served as the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where she later served as the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy. She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008, when she resigned from his presidential campaign under controversy.

Power joined the Obama State Department transition team in late November 2008, and was named Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council — responsible for running the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights — positions that she held from January 2009 to March 2013. In April 2012, Obama chose her to chair a newly formed Atrocities Prevention Board. During her time in office, Power’s office focused on such issues as the reform of the UN; the promotion of women's rights and LGBT rights; the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities; the protection of refugees; the campaign against human trafficking; and the promotion of human rights and democracy, including in the Middle East and North Africa, Sudan, and Burma. She is considered to be a key figure within the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya.

Power has written or co-edited four books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, a study of the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide.