Contributor

Juliette Kayyem

Security Expert

Juliette Kayyem currently serves as the Robert and Renee Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where she is Faculty Director of the Homeland Security Project. She is the founder of Kayyem Solutions, LLC, a company that provides strategic consulting to Fortune 500 companies and start-ups in technology, risk management, mega-event planning and cybersecurity. She is also an on-air national security analyst for CNN. Kayyem spent her government service managing complex policy initiatives and organizing government responses to major crises in both state and federal government. Most recently, she was President Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. There she played a pivotal role in major operations including handling of the H1N1 pandemic and the BP Oil Spill response; she also organized major policy efforts in immigration reform and community resiliency. Before that, she was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s homeland security advisor guiding regional planning and the state’s first interoperability plan, and overseeing the National Guard. She has served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism, a legal advisor to US Attorney General Janet Reno, and a trial attorney and counselor in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. Kayyem hosts a regular podcast entitled The SCIF for WGBH, Boston’s local NPR station, and her newest book, Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home, was published in 2016. She is the recipient of many government honors including the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard’s highest medal awarded to a civilian. In 2013, she was named the Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial columns in the Boston Globe focused on ending the Pentagon’s combat exclusion rule against women, a policy that was changed that year. Juliette is a board member of Mass Inc., the International Centre for Sport Security, and the Red Cross of MA. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Global Cyber Alliance, the Trilateral Commission and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson’s Homeland Security Advisory Committee. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and the mother of three children, she is married to First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Barron.

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