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Biography
Rachel Samuelson currently serves as the Program Manager and a Henry Kissinger Fellow within the office of the Global Alliances Program (GAP), where she oversees various projects including the formation of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Americas (ALTA) – a platform, due to launch in Spring of 2013, for supporting, coordinating and implementing both public and private partnerships that focus on the creation and advancement of economic and educational opportunities throughout South and Central America.
Simultaneously, Rachel manages the Institute’s burgeoning partnership with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), with whom GAP has partnered on the design and implementation of an 8-part speaker series to take place over the course of 2013. The series, New Ideas @ OSD, will bring leaders, experts, artists, and academics from fields outside the traditional defense establishment to the Pentagon to meet with Department leadership and policy-makers, in an effort to cultivate a culture of innovation and learning across the Department as well as develop creative insights, recommendations, policies, and solutions to the most complex and multi-dimensional issues facing our defense leaders today.
Before shifting her focus to Latin America and Aspen’s Global Alliances Program, Rachel served as a Program Coordinator for Aspen’s Middle East Programs, where she contributed to the launch and development of Partners for a New Beginning (PNB), in addition to providing executive and logistical support for MEP’s various other dialogues and partnerships. PNB, as one of Aspen’s premier locally-driven partnerships, remains operational in ten countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, wherein local business and civil society leaders identify local priorities and projects. PNB then matches these partners with US and international counterparts in order to cultivate economic and educational opportunities, as well as leverage science, technology and people-to-people exchanges in order to address these local agendas.
Prior to joining the Aspen Institute in March 2010, Rachel completed her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Relations at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, having moved to the East Coast from Denver, Colorado.
