Swanee Hunt

Swanee Hunt’s mission is to achieve gender parity, especially as a means to end war and rebuild societies. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Hunt is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy. In 1997 she founded the Women and Public Policy Program, a research center concerned with domestic and foreign policy. An expert on domestic policy and foreign affairs, Hunt is president of Hunt Alternatives Fund, through which she has committed more than $130 million in endowments and grants to provoking social change at local, national, and global levels. From 1993 to 1997, Hunt served as ambassador to Austria. Later, she became a specialist in the role of women in post-communist Europe. In July 1997, she launched “Vital Voices: Women in Democracy,” a conference convening 320 women leaders in business, law, and politics from 39 countries. The meeting spawned the documentary Voices as well as a U.S. State Department initiative, led by Madeleine Albright and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and later an NGO with the same name, co-chaired by Senators Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Hutchison (R-Texas). Hunt has written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy Magazine, International Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, and others.