Sarah Sewall
Sarah Sewall (born August 21, 1961) is Executive Vice President for Policy at In-Q-Tel, a strategic investor for the national security community. A national security expert whose career spans government service and academia,[1] she most recently served as Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, where she was the key architect of the Obama Administration's preventive approach to combatting violent extremism abroad. At both the Pentagon and State Department, she built and led organizations that integrated security and human rights in their policy and operational work. She spent ten years as a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she directed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. In partnership with U.S. military leaders, she helped revise U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, led groundbreaking field assessments of U.S. civilian casualty mitigation efforts, and created new operational concepts for halting mass atrocities.
Sarah Sewall
August 21, 1961
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Early years[edit]
Sewall became interested in anti-satellite weapons during a Washington internship, turning this topic into her undergraduate honors thesis at Harvard. She did graduate work on strategic and international studies at New College, Oxford. She 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. In that role, she was appointed to the bipartisan Senate Arms Control Observer Group, monitoring U.S. arms negotiations and treaty compliance. For six years, Sewall advised Mitchell and drafted legislation to halt U.S. nuclear testing, halt U.S. support for Cambodian rebels, oppose chemical weapons use in Iraq, and reform the War Powers Resolution.[2]
Personal life[edit]
Sewall has been married to Thomas P. Conroy since 1994. They have four daughters. Conroy served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 2007 to 2015. While in college, she competed on Harvard's women's lacrosse team.[18]