Karen J. Hanrahan

Karen Hanrahan is an executive leader with twenty years of experience advancing human rights and building high-impact global initiatives around the world. Karen Hanrahan has worked in the public and private sectors to build movements, lead change and build high-impact organizations and initiatives on a global scale. She has served as a senior appointee in the Obama administration, a United Nations aid worker, a corporate and non-profit executive and a thought leader in global development, human rights and public-private innovation. In her efforts to drive social change and spur social innovation, she has partnered with heads of state, global corporations, local communities, religious leaders, and military forces. She has brought creativity and innovation to intractable challenges in economic development, global health and international human rights.

Karen Hanrahan began her career on the frontlines of advocacy in the Middle East, working with Palestinian youth groups to organize and advocate for non-violent change. She worked to free sex slaves in Afghanistan, to prevent child and exploitative labor in Bangladesh, to end torture in Iraq, to free political prisoners in Ethiopia and to reform abusive security forces around the world. A lawyer by training, Karen Hanrahan has dedicated her career to changing abusive and discriminatory laws and systems, working across lines of politics, race and geography.

Karen Hanrahan served as an appointee in the Obama administration for seven years, including two years overseeing a major project for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Karen Hanrahan advanced human rights and freedom in Africa and South and Central Asia; she worked closely with global corporations on issues of corporate social responsibility, community engagement and human rights; and she shaped US and global policies on gender, LGBTQI, labor rights and security.

Karen Hanrahan also served in the Obama Administration as the U.S. Coordinator for International Assistance to Afghanistan and Pakistan. She went on to design and run the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (the QDDR) for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a major strategic planning and organizational change initiative that has strengthened how the United States conducts diplomacy and development. Karen Hanrahan also served as the Chief Innovation Officer for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), on detail assignment in London, where she built the organization’s innovation capabilities and catalyzed novel solutions to long-standing development challenges.

Karen Hanrahan has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, including serving as the State Department’s Senior Rule of Law Coordinator in Iraq and Senior Consultant to the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights. Prior to this, she served with USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives in Iraq as the Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Transitional Justice. Karen Hanrahan went on to serve as Vice President for International Peace and Stability in a Fortune 500 company, leading a large-scale organizational change effort and travelling around the world to integrate human rights, rule of law and security assistance.

Karen Hanrahan is an alumna of Harvard Business School, University of Washington School of Law and The American University School of International Service, Master’s program in International Peace and Conflict Resolution.