Booker Meets with Ambassador Samantha Power, Nominee to Serve as USAID Administrator

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met with Ambassador Samantha Power, President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as USAID Administrator.

Following their meeting, Senator Booker issued the following statement:

“I had the opportunity to meet virtually with Ambassador Samantha Power, who has been nominated to serve as USAID Administrator. We discussed the complex security challenges facing the world today including climate change, the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region and instability in the Horn of Africa, Libya, and the Middle East. We discussed how the Biden Administration can work together with Congress to reassert U.S. credibility and moral leadership. From serving on the National Security Council staff between 2009 to 2013 to becoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017, it is clear to me that Ambassador Power is eminently qualified to serve as USAID Administrator and that her experience, expertise, and leadership will help to restore America’s standing on the world’s stage and our role as a leader in responding to crises – from COVID-19 to conflict – and to development challenges the world over.”

Ambassador Samantha Power 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.

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.