Amb. Miriam Sapiro

Ambassador Miriam Sapiro is a Senior Adviser (Non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She has held senior positions in the U.S. government, including at the National Security Council, the State Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and in the private sector and NGO community. In these roles, she has worked successfully with governments and international organizations around the world to address complex foreign policy, national security, economic, humanitarian, and development challenges.

Upon confirmation by the Senate, Sapiro served as Deputy and Acting U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), leading negotiations and enforcement with Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas. Her government service includes working in the White House at the National Security Council as Special Assistant and Counselor to the President for Southeast European reconstruction and as a Director of European Affairs. She began her career as an international lawyer in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department before joining the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. In that role, she helped negotiate the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. She is the recipient of two Superior Honor Awards from the State Department.

Sapiro has served as the inaugural Polis Distinguished Fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, as the CEO and President of the NGO alliance InterAction, and as a member of the Supervisory Board of Lufthansa and the Board of Directors of Project HOPE. She received her B.A. from Williams College and J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she was an editor of the Law Review. She is a commentator for major news outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, CNBC, and Bloomberg.