Samantha Erin Vinograd (born February 17, 1983)[1] is a former American government official and presently a foreign policy commentator. She served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, Threat Prevention, and Law Enforcement Policy at the Department of Homeland Security from July 2021 to December 2023.
After high school, Vinograd attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian and Middle Eastern studies.[4] She later received a Master of Arts in security studies from Georgetown University.[5]
In 2013, she began to work for Goldman Sachs focusing on public-private sector partnerships. She later worked at Stripe, leading global public policy before joining CNN as a national security analyst.[5] For several years, Vinograd was also a Senior Advisor at the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware.[9][10]
She has worked as an advisor to the US Fund for UNICEF, was named a David E. Rockefeller Fellow at the Trilateral Commission, a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and serves on the board of the Women's Foreign Policy Group.[11] She co-founded Global Opportunity Advisors, a geopolitical risk and policy advisory firm, with Morgan Ortagus.[12]
Biden Administration
Vinograd began serving in the Biden administration as senior counselor for national security and acting assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department of Homeland Security in February 2021.[13] She was promoted to assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention in July 2021.[14]
^Haberman, Maggie (September 19, 2016). "Letter From Former Officials Urges Donald Trump to Detail Foreign Dealings". NYT. Retrieved July 25, 2020. Michael J. Morell, a former acting director of the C.I.A., and Michael G. Vickers, a former under secretary of defense for intelligence, put together the letter with input from Samantha Vinograd, a former senior adviser to Thomas E. Donilon, a former national security adviser.
^Bade, Rachael; Lizza, Ryan; Palmeri, Tara; Daniels, Eugene (10 February 2021). "POLITICO Playbook: Trump is furious, and McConnell might vote to convict". Politico. Retrieved 30 April 2021. Samantha Vinograd will be senior counselor for national security at DHS. She most recently was at CNN and the Biden Institute...
^ Deutch, Gabby (April 24, 2020). "For the State Dept's top spokeswoman, her journey to Judaism began in Baghdad". Jewish Insider. Retrieved July 28, 2020. In 2018, Ortagus and Vinograd founded a consulting firm, flaunting what they saw as their unique brand of bipartisanship. They briefly wrote a Marie Claire column titled 'Opp-ed' — as in, 'opposing political sides' — in which they discussed and explained their political disagreements.
