Tamara Klajn is a fellow in New America's Future Security program. Klajn advises on international interventions, political risk, and counterterrorism, having worked on these issues in Washington, D.C., Afghanistan, Somalia, and Ghana.
Until January 2017, Klajn served as chief of staff for Secretary John Kerry’s Policy Planning staff, managing a 30-person team of top scholars, regional experts, and senior members of the military and intelligence community responsible for providing independent analysis and recommendations directly to the Secretary of State. She previously served as the senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs where she led strategic initiatives, including the inaugural U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2014. Prior to her time at the State Department, she was a professional staff member with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, focusing on oversight of global counterterrorism policy, sub-Saharan Africa, public diplomacy, and the Peace Corps. She also served in the Department of Defense in a number of capacities, including: as a member of General Stanley McChrystal’s Strategic Advisory Group in Afghanistan; in the Joint Staff’s Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell; in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Plans; as a detailee to the State Department’s Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; and as special assistant to the Deputy Comptroller.
Prior to her time in government, Klajn worked in Somalia for the Academy for Peace and Development and in Ghana for the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre.
Klajn is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She holds an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School and an A.B. in history and science from Harvard College. While at the Harvard Kennedy School, Klajn worked as an associate for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project, and the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research. She also worked as a researcher for the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, conducting the first governance appraisal of Somaliland.