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Juliette Kayyem

Former Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs, Department of Homeland Security

Juliette Kayyem is a national security, intelligence and terrorism analyst for CNN who has spent over 15 years managing complex policy initiatives and organizing government responses to major crises in both state and federal government. She is the founder of Kayyem Solutions, LLC, providing strategic advice to a range of companies in technology, risk management, mega-event planning, venture capital and more.

Currently, Kayyem teaches new leaders in emergency management and homeland security as a faculty member at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Kayyem serves as an on-air security analyst for CNN and is featured in a weekly radio program on Boston's NPR station WGBH, for which she also hosts a regular podcast entitled "Security Mom." 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.

Previously, Kayyem was President Obama's Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. There she played a pivotal role in major operations including handling of the H1N1 pandemic and the BP Oil Spill response; she also organized major policy efforts in immigration reform and community resiliency. Before that, she was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's homeland security advisor, guiding regional planning and the state's first interoperability plan, and overseeing the National Guard. She has also served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism, a legal advisor to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, and a trial attorney and counselor in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. She is the recipient of many government honors, including the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard's highest medal awarded to a civilian.

Kayyem is a board member of MassINC, the International Centre for Sport Security, and the Red Cross of MA. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson's Homeland Security Advisory Committee. 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.