Juliette Kayyem

In government, the academy, private sector and journalism, Juliette Kayyem has served as a national leader in America’s homeland security efforts. Kayyem is founder of one of the few female-owned security businesses and has spent more than 15 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. Before that, she was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s homeland security advisor. She has also 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 a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has authored several books on homeland security.

A long-standing CNN security analyst, she was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013 for her columns in the Boston Globe. She is a board or advisory member of Mass Inc., the Boston 2024 Olympic Committee, the Red Cross of MA, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2014, Kayyem was a Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. 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. Her memoir, Security Mom: Terrorists, Hurricanes, Oil Spills and Other Bedtime Stories, will be published by Simon and Shuster in 2016.