Alumni
Belfer Center experts have shaped consequential global conversations for decades, engaged with world leaders, affected communities, and influential thought leaders to advance peace, security and, more recently, sustainability.
Here we pay tribute to our Alumni.
The Belfer Pipeline: our Alumni are reshaping global affairs
From 2021, Jake Sullivan served as former U.S. National Security Advisor.
He previously served as Director of Policy to President Barack Obama, National Security Advisor to then-Vice President Biden and Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State.
At the Belfer Center, Jake Sullivan was a Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project.
Nicholas Burns is former U.S. Ambassador to China. He was appointed in 2022, following a 25-year career in the State Department.
At the Harvard Kennedy School, Burns was Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations.
Burns was a member of the Belfer Center Board and during his tenure, was instrumental in the leadership and development of several projects here, including the Future of Diplomacy Project, Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, American Secretaries of State, and the Middle East Initiative.
Kurt Campbell is the former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State. He was previously National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Obama Administration.
Campbell was Assistant Director at the Belfer Center a Senior Fellow.
Samantha Power served as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. After a prolific journalism She previously served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017.
Power is currently on public service leave from Harvard Kennedy School, where she is Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, and Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School.
Power is a former member of the Belfer Center Board.
Bonnie Jenkins served as the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. During the Obama administration, she was the U.S. Department of State's coordinator for threat reduction programs in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.
Jenkins was a Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program, from 2002–2005.
Michael Sulmeyer was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy and the Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, and was previously Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of the Army.
Sulmeyer was the Director of the Cybersecurity Project at the Belfer Center.
Sasha Baker was the former Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Department of Defense. Prior to this she served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council, as national security advisor for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and as Deputy Chief of Staff for Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, for which she received the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal.
She is a former Fellow with the Belfer Center, and a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School.
Matan Chorev serves as the Principal Deputy Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. He was previously Chief of Staff of the National Security and Foreign Policy team on the Biden-Harris Transition and the foreign policy author of the 2020 Democratic Party Platform.
At the Belfer Center he was a Research Associate, and the Executive Director of the Future of National Security Project.
Cait Conley was Senior Advisor to the Director of CISA, The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. She also served as the Director for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council.
At the Belfer Center, Conley was Executive Director of the Defending Digital Democracy Project.
Michèle Flournoy served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy under President Bill Clinton, and as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President Obama.
Flournoy has a long history with the Belfer Center. She was a Senior Fellow with the Defense, Emerging Technology and Strategy Program in 2012, and a Research Fellow with the International Security Program from 1989-93.
Laura Holgate was Ambassador and U.S. Representative to United Nations-Vienna and International Atomic Energy Agency. She served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism and Threat Reduction.
Holgate began her career at the Belfer Center in 1990 as Coordinator for Projects on Cooperative Security and Post-Cold War Reconstruction, before her move to the Pentagon. She returned as a Senior Fellow in 2017.
Aditi Kumar is the Deputy Director for Strategy, Policy, and National Security Partnerships at the Defense Innovation Unit.
Before joining the Department of Defense, Kumar was Executive Director of the Belfer Center and led the Economic Diplomacy Initiative, focused on research and expertise at the intersection of international affairs and economic policy, as well as a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School.
Vipin Narang is a Professor of Political Science at MIT. He previously served as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy until August 2024.
At the Belfer Center, he was a Research Fellow with the International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom.
Susan Rice was Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council from 2021 to 2023, and formerly served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and as National Security Advisor.
Rice joined the Belfer Center as a Senior Fellow in 2017.
Liz Sherwood-Randall served as the 11th United States Homeland Security Advisor to President Biden, from 2021. She was formerly Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy, White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Arms Control, and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council.
At the Belfer Center, Sherwood-Randall was the Associate Director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, co-founded with Graham Allison.
Lauren Zabierek is a Senior Policy Advisor with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
At the Belfer Center, she has was former Executive Director of the Cyber Project for several years.
Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly paid column for The Washington Post.
Zakaria was a Research Fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, from 1988-1991.
