Juliette Kayyem is Special Advisor to The Edward Davis Company. Kayyem assists EDC with various consulting clients, mainly focusing on issues that affect public health. Kayyem provides current health updates to EDC’s consulting clients through constant monitoring of news outlets, providing knowledge of local and global news. Kayyem has spent over 15 years managing complex policy initiatives and organizing government responses to major crises in both state and federal government. Most recently, she was President Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. There she played a pivotal role in major operations including handling of the H1N1 pandemic and the BP Oil Spill response; she also organized major policy efforts in immigration reform and community resiliency.

Before that, Kayyem served as Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s Homeland Security Advisor, guiding regional planning, the state’s first interoperability plan, and overseeing the National Guard. Kayyem has also served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism, a legal advisor to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, and a trial attorney and counselor in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. Kayyem is the recipient of many government honors, including the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard’s highest medal awarded to a civilian. In 2013, Kayyem was named the Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial columns in the Boston Globe focused on ending the Pentagon’s combat exclusion rule against women, a policy that was changed that year.

Kayyem is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and formally served on the DHS Secretary’s Homeland Security Advisory Committee. Kayyem is also the Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard Kennedy School where she teaches new leaders in emergency management and homeland security. Kayyem serves as a regular on-air national security analyst and contributor for CNN, hosts a national security podcast called The SCIF, and is a weekly featured analyst on Boston Public Radio, 89.7 WGBH Boston’s Local NPR. Kayyem is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.