(credit: wikipedia)  Former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to head the U.S. Agency for International Development

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

President-elect Joe Biden has tapped  former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to head the U.S. Agency for International Development. The in-coming Biden administration also elevated the USAID  position to become a member of the National Security Council.

“Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people,”

-Joe Biden said in a statement on Wednesday  

Biden added that  as USAID Administrator,  “Ambassador Power will be a powerful force for lifting up the vulnerable, ushering in a new era of human progress and development, and advancing American interests globally.”

Ambassador Power is an Immigrant from Ireland 

(credit: buildbackbetter.gov)  Ambassador Samantha Power

Ambassador  Power,  50-years-old,  served in the Obama-Biden Administration Cabinet from 2013 to 2017 as the 28th U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. During her time at the United Nations, Ambassador Power rallied countries to combat the Ebola epidemic, ratify the Paris climate agreement, and develop new international law to cripple ISIS’s financial networks. She worked to negotiate and implement the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, and helped catalyze bold international commitments to care for refugees. And she advocated to secure the release of political prisoners, defend civil society from growing repression, and protect the rights of women and girls, the Biden-Harris Transition said in a statement.

Prior to this role, from 2009 to 2013, Ambassador Power served on the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. At the NSC, she was a key part of the Obama-Biden national security team, advising them on issues such as democracy promotion, UN reform, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, atrocity prevention, and the fights against human trafficking and global corruption.

An immigrant from Ireland, Ambassador Power began her career as a war correspondent in Bosnia, and went on to report from places including Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Before her service in government, she was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Currently, Ambassador Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and William D. Zabel ’61 Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. She earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.