Our Team

Ann F. Kaplan Professor of Professional Practice; Director, Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative, Institute of Global Politics

Jennifer Klein is the Ann F. Kaplan professor of professional practice at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics.

During the Biden Administration, Klein was an Assistant to the President and the Director of the White House Gender Policy Council. Klein advised the president and vice-president on domestic and foreign policy issues, including women’s health and reproductive rights, gender-based violence, women’s economic security, and women’s human rights and democratic participation. During the Obama administration, Klein served as a Deputy and Senior Advisor in the Office of Global Women’s Issues at the US Department of State. During the Clinton Administration, she worked at the White House in a dual appointment as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senior Domestic Policy Advisor and a Special Assistant to the President on the Domestic Policy Council.

Read Full Bio

Rachel Vogelstein, Associate Professor of Professional Practice; Director, Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative, Institute of Global Politics; Director, Human Rights, Gender, and Equity Concentration, Columbia SIPA

Rachel Vogelstein is an associate professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics. She is also the Founding Director of Columbia’s Human Rights, Gender, and Equity program. 

Vogelstein previously served in the Biden Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, and concurrently served as Special Advisor on Gender at the National Security Council, where she led policy development on women’s health and reproductive rights, gender-based violence, and women' s economic security and political participation, among other issues. Before that, she was an advisor to Secretary Hillary Clinton on women's issues, serving on both of her presidential campaigns and as the Director of Girls' and Women's Initiatives at the Clinton Foundation. During the Obama Administration, she was an official in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues at the US Department of State, where she developed a landmark foreign policy agenda for women's empowerment, for which she received the Secretary of State’s Superior Honor Award.

Read Full Bio

Special Assistant to Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, IGP Associate Director, Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia SIPA

Lauren Hoffman is the special assistant to Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and associate director of the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia SIPA, where she helps advance policy research and programming with a focus on the Women’s Initiative. She is also an adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs at SIPA. Prior to Columbia, Hoffman was the associate director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress, focusing on women’s economic security. Hoffman’s work has been cited by The New York Times, BBC, the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform, Deloitte, The Urban Institute, amicus briefs, and law review articles. Her commentary has been featured in CNBC, Business Insider, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, and MarketWatch. Hoffman has also worked at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, TIME’S UP, the National Women’s Law Center, the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation, and with the Women and Foreign Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. She started her career as a legal analyst at Goldman Sachs. Hoffman graduated with a JD from American University Washington College of Law and a BA from Yale University in Political Science and French.

Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative Policy Analyst

Chelsea Tabachnik is the Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative Policy Analyst at the Institute of Global Politics, where she manages the operations of the Initiative and supports policy research and programming focused on advancing women’s full and equal participation in the United States and globally. She has also worked for Fair Fight Action, Women for Biden-Harris, the UK Labour Party, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Representative Barbara Lee. She graduated Summa cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia College, Columbia University with a degree in Political Science (Hons).