Meghan L. O'Sullivan
Meghan L. O’Sullivan is the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and the Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She is also a Partner at the strategic consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners and is the Chair of the North American Group of the Trilateral Commission. Meghan draws on her broad experience in government, business, diplomacy, and academia to shed insights into foreign policy and national security, energy markets, the transition to a net-zero global economy, and the geopolitics of that transition to benefit her students and colleagues, the U.S. government, global businesses, and the public debate.
Meghan has extensive experience in policy formulation and in negotiation. She is currently a member of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Foreign Policy Advisory Board. Between 2004 and 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan during the last two years of her tenure. Meghan spent two years in Iraq during which she helped negotiate the Transitional Administrative Law, which was the interim constitution of Iraq from 2004-2006, and conclude the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and strategic framework agreement between the United States and Iraq. From July 2013 to December 2013, Meghan was the Vice Chair of the All Party Talks in Northern Ireland, which sought to resolve outstanding in the peace process. She also worked in the office of Policy Planning in the State Department under Secretary of State Colin Powell. Meghan sits on the board of a public company, Raytheon Technologies, as well as several non-profit organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations.
Meghan has written several books and many articles on international affairs, including her award winning 2017 book Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power and two 2022 Foreign Affairs articles about how the energy transition is reshaping global politics. 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 2008, Esquire Magazine named her one of the most influential people of the century. O’Sullivan earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, a master’s of science in economics, and doctorate in politics from Oxford University. She holds a Top Secret/SCI Security Clearance from the U.S. government.
The Salata Institute
The Salata Institute supports interdisciplinary research that leads to real-world action, including high-risk/high-reward projects by researchers already working in the climate area and new endeavors that make it easier for Harvard scholars, who have not worked on climate problems, to do so.