Mona K. Sutphen ’89 served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for policy for President Barack Obama from 2009 until February 2011. In that capacity, she advised the president on a range of issues, including regulatory matters, economic policy, and strategic plans. Sutphen also served as a foreign policy advisor on the 2008 presidential campaign and in the Obama-Biden transition. Sutphen majored in international relations at Mount Holyoke College; during her senior year, she worked as a research assistant to Anthony Lake, a professor of international relations who later served as President Bill Clinton’s first national security advisor. After graduation, Sutphen earned a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. From 1991 to 2000, Sutphen was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, serving in the Clinton administration on the staff of the National Security Council, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo, and at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. In 2001, she became managing director at Stonebridge International, a global strategy consulting firm. Sutphen also worked as vice president at Currenex, the first Internet-based trading platform for the institutional foreign exchange market. Sutphen is a managing director at UBS, the Swiss global financial services firm. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and coauthor of The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (Simon & Schuster, 2008). This fall, she was named to President Obama’s Advisory Intelligence Board, an independent part of the Executive Office that provides advice on the effectiveness of the intelligence community.

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