Suzanne Nossel is Chief Operating Officer for Human Rights Watch. She served as Deputy to the Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the US Mission to the United Nations from 1999 – 2001 under Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. There she was the lead representative of the U.S. in the UN’s General Assembly negotiating a deal to settle the U.S.’s arrears to the world body. She was awarded the Distinguished Honor Award, the State Department’s highest honor in recognition of the successful conclusion of a consensus agreement on reforms of the UN financial system and payment of US dues.

After leaving the UN, she served as Vice President of US Business Development at Bertelsmann Media Worldwide from 2001 – 2005. She then served as Vice President of Strategy and Operations for the Wall Street Journal from 2005 - 2007. She is the founder of the weblog www.democracyarsenal.org.

Prior to her government service, Suzanne served as a Consultant at McKinsey & Company. During the early 1990s Suzanne worked in Johannesburg, South Africa on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord, a multi-party agreement aimed at curbing political violence during that country’s transition to democracy. Ms. Nossel has done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. She is also the author of Presumed Equal: What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms (Career Press, 1998). Nossel was awarded the Jane Rainey Opel Prize for the most distinguished alumnae in the Harvard-Radcliffe reunion class. She writes frequently on foreign policy topics, and has published pieces in publications that include Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Dissent, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Human Rights Watch Reports

Articles

"Closing Gitmo is just the beginning," The Guardian, November 19, 2008

"Containing Disaster," The American Prospect, February 12, 2007

"The Bush Doctrine: Five Years Later," The Huffington Post, September 10, 2006

"Two Wars on Terror," The American Prospect, August 17, 2006

"Why Don't They Like Us," The American Prospect, June 18, 2006

"Ballot Botch," The American Prospect, October 19, 2005

"Hard Job for a Hardnose," The American Prospect, August 1, 2005

"Smart Power," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004