Ambassador Sarah E. Mendelson
Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy, Head of Heinz College in Washington, DC, Carnegie Mellon University (Working Group II Lead)
Ambassador Sarah E. Mendelson is Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy and Head of Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College in Washington, DC. Her current work centers on the Sustainable Development Goals, and she cochairs Carnegie Mellon’s Sustainability Initiative steering committee. Previously, she served as the US Representative to the UN’s Economic and Social Council, where she led on development, human rights, and humanitarian affairs. Prior to USUN, she served as a Deputy Assistant Administrator at USAID on democracy, human rights, and governance. She spent over a decade as a senior adviser and the inaugural director of the Human Rights Initiative at CSIS. She received her BA in history from Yale and her PhD in political science from Columbia.
