About Me

Professor Juliette Kayyem is currently the faculty chair of the Homeland Security and Security and Global Health Projects at Harvard & Kennedy School of Government. She also serves as CNN Senior National Security Analyst for CNN where she has been described as CNN’s “go to” for disasters. A contributing writer to The Atlantic, she has a weekly security segment on NPR’s Boston station WGBH. Her most recent book, The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters, was described in a New Yorker profile of her as an “engagingly urgent blueprint for rethinking our approach to disaster preparedness and response.”

In government, she most recently served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. Previously, she was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s Homeland Security Advisor. She is the recipient of many government honors, including the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard’s highest medal awarded to a civilian.

She is a frequent speaker and advisor to major corporations and associations on national and homeland security, planning for a crisis, cybersecurity and resiliency efforts. From 2020-2022, she served as faculty for a joint effort with Bloomberg Philanthropies and Harvard University to train mayors and city leaders for pandemic planning. She is a Senior Advisor to Teneo, the global consulting firm, and also serves as a security advisor and consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and startups. She was named Inc. Magazine’s top 100 Female Founders in 2019 and received the Lifetime Achievement Pinnacle Award from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in 2023.

A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and the mother of three children, she is married to First Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge David Barron.