Samantha Power ’99, who has served as an adviser to President Barack Obama ’91 on foreign policy and national security, won confirmation Thursday as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She was confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 87 to 10.
“As one of our country’s leading foreign policy thinkers, Samantha knows that our nation’s interests are advanced with strong and principled American leadership,” Obama said in a statement following the Senate vote. “As a long-time champion of human rights and dignity, she will be a fierce advocate for universal rights, fundamental freedoms and U.S. national interests.”
Power began her career as a journalist and has gone on to write articles and books about foreign policy, human rights, genocide, and war. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” Before joining the Obama administration, she was a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the founder of the school’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
She is married to Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein ’78, who served as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget.