Farah Pandith

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Farah Pandith is a foreign policy advisor, former diplomat, and author. A world-leading expert and pioneer on countering violent extremism, she is a frequent media commentator and public speaker. She served as a political appointee in the George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations, and she was the first-ever special representative to Muslim Communities, serving both secretaries Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Under President George W. Bush, Pandith was the director for Middle East Regional Initiatives at the National Security Council, and the chief of staff at the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Asia and the Near East. She has also served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, chairing its task force on countering violent extremism. She is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the inaugural Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She is the founder and principal of Farah Pandith Advisory, LLC, a strategic consulting firm focused on soft power and national security. She has written for publications including The Economist, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. For more than a decade she was a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She received an AB from Smith College, and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Pandith was born in Kashmir, India, and raised in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.