Sara Godfrey

Sara Godfrey is an MIA candidate at Columbia SIPA, where she concentrates in International Economics and Security Policy. Her interests include international trade, sanctions, investment policy, and economic crises. She is currently an economist intern on the US Macroeconomic Forecasting team at Oxford Economics, where she covers developments in trade, defense spending, fiscal sustainability, and monetary policy.

Sara is an advanced Arabic speaker and Middle East specialist, having spent two years working and studying throughout the region. Prior to SIPA, she served as a program coordinator at a crisis response NGO in Jordan, as an intern on the congressional affairs team at the Middle East Policy Council, and as a lead research assistant to David Crane, the former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

At SIPA, Sara conducts research on international trade policy for Professor Merit Janow and is a 2025 IFP Fellow. Last spring, she was selected as one of six security policy students to represent Columbia at the US Army War College’s Annual Strategy Competition, where she helped lead her team to second place. As an IGP student scholar, she hopes to continue to explore and build her expertise in economic security issues.