Rachel Vogelstein

Rachel Vogelstein joins SIPA as associate professor of professional practice, effective January 20. She will lead the IGP Women’s Initiative, along with Klein, and also SIPA’s Human Rights, Gender, and Equity concentration, along with Yasmine Ergas, SIPA senior lecturer in the discipline of international and public affairs. She will teach courses starting in the fall.

Vogelstein is an expert on domestic and global policy to advance gender equality. Most recently, she served in the Biden Administration as deputy director and special assistant to the president at the White House Gender Policy Council and special advisor on gender at the White House National Security Council, leading efforts on health and reproductive rights, economic security, democracy and political participation, gender-based violence, and education and humanitarian relief, among other issues. She is the author of Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights. During the Obama administration, Vogelstein served on the White House Council on Women and Girls and as an official in the secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the US State Department. Previously, she was the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A graduate of Columbia’s Barnard College and Georgetown University Law Center, Vogelstein has worked on women’s health at the National Women’s Law Center and ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, and taught classes on domestic and global gender policy at Georgetown Law and Yale Law School. She has served on the boards of the National Women’s History Museum and Planned Parenthood Global and as part of the Leadership Coalition for Women in National Security.