Hillary Mann Leverett

Biography provided by participant

Hillary Mann Leverett is CEO of STRATEGA. She has more than 20 years of academic, legal, business, diplomatic, and policy experience working on Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and African issues. In the Bush Administration, Leverett worked as the Director for Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, Middle East specialist on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, and as Political Advisor for Middle East, Central Asian and African issues for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. From 2001-2003, she was one of a small number of U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaida and Iraq. In the Clinton Administration, Leverett also served as Political Advisor for Middle East, Central Asian and African issues for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Associate Director for Near Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council, and as Special Assistant to the Ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a Watson Fellowship, and from 1990-1991 worked in the U.S. embassies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt and Israel. Leverett has published Op Eds on Middle Eastern and South Asian issues in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, al Hayat, The National Interest, and Salon, and has appeared on news and public affairs programs on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and al Jazeera. Along with her husband, Flynt Leverett, she was profiled in a feature story in the November 2007 issue of Esquire magazine. She has provided expert testimony to the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Leverett is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Brandeis University. She also studied at the American University in Cairo and Tel Aviv University.