About Me

In government, academia, journalism, and the private sector, Juliette Kayyem has served as a national leader in America’s homeland security efforts.

 

Juliette Kayyem is currently the Robert and Renee Belfer Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she is Faculty Director of the Homeland Security Project and the Security and Global Health Project.

She is the CEO and Co – Founder of Grip Mobility, a technology company looking to provide transparency in the rideshare industry. She has spent over 20 years 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 critical infrastructure protections 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, climate change policies, 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. She is the recipient of many government honors, including the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard’s highest medal awarded to a civilian.

Kayyem appears frequently on CNN as their on-air national security analyst. Additionally, she is a weekly featured analyst on Boston Public Radio, 89.7 WGBH Boston’s Local NPR. She also has columns in The Atlantic.

 

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.

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.