Samantha Power: podcast appearances and interviews

Samantha Jane Power is an Irish-American journalist, diplomat, and government official who has served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017 and as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development from 2021 to 2025. She began her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars before transitioning into academic administration. 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. Power was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008 and joined his transition team in late 2008. She served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from 2009 to 2013. In April 2012, she was appointed to chair the Atrocities Prevention Board. During her tenure as United Nations ambassador, her office addressed issues including UN reform, women's rights, LGBT rights, religious freedom, refugees, human trafficking, and democracy across regions such as the Middle East, North Africa, Sudan, and Myanmar. A vocal advocate for U.S. military intervention to prevent atrocities, she was a key figure in persuading administration decisions on intervention in Libya. Power is featured in the 2014 documentary Watchers of the Sky and authored the Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She has received several honors, including the Barnard Medal of Distinction and the Henry A. Kissinger Prize, and has been recognized as one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes.