Juliette Kayyem

In academia, government, media and the private sector, Juliette Kayyem is a global leader in safety, security and crisis management efforts. Professor Juliette Kayyem is currently the faculty chair of Homeland Security at Harvard's 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.” She is the author of Early Warning newsletter on Substack.

In government, she 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.  Before that, she was a member of the National Commission on Terrorism and a legal advisor and trial attorney at the Department of Justice. She is the recipient of many government honors, including the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard’s highest medal awarded to a civilian. 

Professor Kayyem is the author or editor of six books including the best-selling book “Security Mom” in 2016, a memoir that explores the intersection, and commonalities, of her life in homeland security and her life as a mother. 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. She won the Telly Award in 2021 for “excellence in a digital series” for her online documentaries with MyRadar.com on climate change. 

She is a frequent speaker and advisor to major corporations, associations, sports, entertainment and education entities on national and homeland security risks, 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 serves as a security advisor to Commonweal Ventures 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. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and serves as a board member for the American Red Cross of Massachusetts. 

Kayyem, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, was the first Arab American to serve as a state head of homeland security and was the highest ranking Arab American female in the Obama Administration. 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.