Aditi Kumar is Executive Director of the Belfer Center. Prior to coming to the Belfer Center, Kumar was a Principal at Oliver Wyman, a management consultancy, in the financial services and public policy practices. She worked primarily with U.S. commercial and investment banks as well as U.S. regulators and policymakers on designing and implementing financial and economic policy. Kumar previously served as a project manager at the World Economic Forum, responsible for leading policy discussions among financial sector executives and policymakers on managing financial risk and designing effective global financial regulation. Kumar is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where she studied international affairs, and specifically the nexus of national security and financial and economic policy. She previously worked at the International Affairs office of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, focused on assessing the public debt sustainability of Eastern European nations. She graduated from the Huntsman Program for International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies.
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh is a Research Fellow with the Iran Project and an Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Her research focuses on Iran’s leadership decision-making and nuclear program. Beginning her tenure as a career civil servant within the U.S. government in 2005, she has focused on Iran under three U.S. administrations. She was charged with covering the Iran portfolio on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff between 2016 and 2017 and served as a Director for Iran and Iran Nuclear Implementation on the White House National Security Council (NSC) Staff from 2014 to 2016. At the NSC, she was part of President Obama’s team responsible for supporting the negotiation and implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached between the P5+1, the European Union and Iran in 2015. She also previously served as a Team Chief and Senior Analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense and a Foreign Affairs Officer and Persian Language Spokesperson at the U.S. Department of State. She is the recipient of such awards as the State Department Superior Honor Award, a National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation and the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terrorism.
Sahar earned her Bachelor’s Degree in International Affairs with a double concentration in International Economics and Middle East Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University in 2005. She earned her Master’s Degree in Persian Studies from the University of Maryland-College Park in 2007. Sahar knows several languages, including Persian, Spanish and Arabic. She was born and raised in Connecticut.
Reid Pauly is a PhD candidate in Political Science at MIT and a predoctoral fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom. His dissertation explains the causes of credible coercive assurance—why and how targets of coercion believe that they will not be punished after they comply with demands. His broader research interests include nuclear proliferation, nuclear strategy, deterrence and assurance theory, wargaming, and Arctic security. Prior to graduate school, Reid was a research assistant at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and earned a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University.
