Sarah Chayes

Sarah Chayes is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she does groundbreaking analysis on the structure of corruption networks worldwide, and how corruption contributes to such international crises as the rise of violent extremism, revolutions and their violent aftermaths and environmental destruction.  Her book Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security won the 2016 LA Times Book Prize.  Before joining Carnegie, she served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.  He tapped Chayes for the job after she had spent nearly a decade living and working in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  That is where her understanding of the threats of kleptocratic governance originated.