Suzanne Nossel

Suzanne Nossel became the executive director of PEN American Center. She had been the executive director of Amnesty International USA since January 2, 2012. "Most recently, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, where she was responsible for multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, women's issues, public diplomacy, press and Congressional relations. In that capacity, Nossel played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council, including the initiation of human rights resolutions on Iran, Syria, Libya, Cote d'Ivoire, freedom of association and freedom of expression. Prior to that, she served as Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch. Nossel previously served as deputy to the Ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. She has also worked as a vice president at Bertelsmann Media Worldwide and The Wall Street Journal and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and has been a fellow and scholar at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the Council on Foreign Relations."

"She served as deputy to the Ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1999 to 2001 under Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke... After leaving the United Nations, she served as vice president of U.S. Business Development at Bertelsmann Media Worldwide from 2001 to 2005. She then served as vice president of strategy and operations for the Wall Street Journal from 2005 to 2007. She is the founder of the blog www.democracyarsenal.org and also a contributor to The Huffington Post and The New Republic online.

"Prior to her government service, Nossel served as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. During the early 1990s Suzanne worked in Johannesburg, South Africa on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord, a multi-party agreement aimed at curbing political violence during that country’s transition to democracy. Nossel has done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. She is also the author of Presumed Equal: What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms (Career Press, 1998)."

She’s married to David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers and a Slate columnist.


 * Senior Advisor, Truman National Security Project

External Resources

 * Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley, Amnesty's Shilling for US Wars, ConsortiumNews, 18 June 2012.
 * Philip Weiss, Amnesty Int'l collapse: new head is former State Dept official who rationalized Iran sanctions, Gaza onslaught, Mondoweiss, 22 June 2012. Contains a video interview with Nossel.
 * John V. Walsh and Coleen Rowley, "U.S. Cooption of the Human Rights Movement Continues: An Appeal to PEN: Exec. Director Suzanne Nossel Must Go", Dissident Voice, April 1, 2013.