Meghan O'Sullivan

Meghan R. O'Sullivan is Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard University's Belfer Center. Her areas of research include nation-building, counterinsurgency, decision making in foreign policy, the geopolitics of energy, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. She has been awarded the Defense Department's highest honor for civilians, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and three times been awarded the State Department's Superior Honor Award. In October 2008, Esquire magazine named her one of the most influential people of the century.

From July 2004 to September 2007, she was Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and also held the position of Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan[[ for the last two years of this tenure. She spent two of the last five and a half years in Iraq, most recently in fall 2008 at the request of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General [[Ray Odierno to help conclude the security agreement and strategic framework agreement between the United States and Iraq.

As Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan. She participated in strategic policy reviews on Afghanistan in the summer of 2006 and one on Iraq in late 2006 and early 2007. She was promoted to that role from Senior Director for Strategic Planning and Southwest Asia. National Security Council (NSC).

Before joining the NSC, she was political advisor to the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Deputy Director for Governance in Baghdad, Iraq from April 2003 to June 2004, and worked on the Transitional Administrative Law and the Iraqi Interim Government.

Prior to CPA, she was a member of the humanitrian assistance team in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in the Iraq War. Previously, she was a planner in the State Department "Future of Iraq" project.

Department of State
From November 2001 to March 2003, she was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, where she was the chief advisor to the presidential envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process and helped advance efforts to promote reform in the Muslim world.

Research and academia
From 1998-2001, Dr. O'Sullivan was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution. During that time, she was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and published several books and articles on American foreign policy, including the single authored Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (2003) and edited volume (with Richard Haass) Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (2000).

Dr. O'Sullivan received a B.A. from Georgetown University; she received a masters of science in Economics and doctorate in Politics from Oxford University.