Suzanne Nossel

About Suzanne Nossel

Suzanne Nossel is an expert and analyst on issues including human rights, multilateral diplomacy, and US foreign policy. She is the author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All (Harper Collins) and a co-author of Is Free Speech Under Threat (Penguin Random House UK). She previously served as CEO of global free expression organization PEN America, where she increased the organization’s staff and budget by more than 600%. She built PEN America into a national organization with cutting-edge programs addressing free speech, censorship, and artistic freedom, and ran offices in Los Angeles, Washington, and Miami, as well as chapters across the country. She oversaw groundbreaking work on free expression in Hong Kong and China, Myanmar, Eurasia, Ukraine, and the United States. Nossel serves as a member of the oversight board, an independent body using human rights principles to adjudicate sensitive and high-profile content moderation decisions on Meta platforms.

Her prior career spanned government service and leadership roles in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. She has served as the chief operating officer of Human Rights Watch and as executive director of Amnesty International USA. During the first term of the Obama administration, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, where she led US engagement in the United Nations and multilateral institutions on human rights and humanitarian issues. During the Clinton administration, Nossel was Deputy to the US Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the US Mission to the United Nations, where she was the lead negotiator in settling US arrears to the world body.

During her corporate career, Nossel served as vice president of US business development for Bertelsmann and as vice president for strategy and operations for the Wall Street Journal. Nossel coined the term "Smart Power," which was the title of a 2004 article she published in Foreign Affairs magazine and later became the theme of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure in office.

Nossel is a featured columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and has published op-eds in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, and dozens of other outlets, as well as scholarly articles in Foreign Affairs, Dissent magazine, Democracy, and other journals. She has served as a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Nossel is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and a recipient of the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship.