Rachel Vogelstein

Rachel Vogelstein is an associate professor of practice at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Women's Initiative at the Columbia Institute of Global Politics, where she focuses on gender equality in the U.S. and globally. She is also the Faculty Co-Director of the Human Rights, Gender, and Equity concentration. 

Vogelstein previously served in the Biden Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, and concurrently served as Special Advisor on Gender at the National Security Council, where she led policy development on women’s health and reproductive rights, gender-based violence, and women' s economic security and political participation, among other issues. Before that, she was an advisor to Secretary Hillary Clinton on women's issues, serving on both of her presidential campaigns and as the Director of Girls' and Women's Initiatives at the Clinton Foundation. During the Obama Administration, she was an official in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues at the U.S. Department of State, where she developed a landmark foreign policy agenda for women's empowerment, for which she received the Secretary of State’s Superior Honor Award. 

Vogelstein is the author of Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women's Rights, which was recognized by the New York Times for capturing the global impact of the #MeToo movement. Previously, she served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and taught courses on women’s rights at Georgetown Law School and as a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School. 

A graduate of Columbia’s Barnard College and Georgetown Law School, Vogelstein began her career as a clerk for the Honorable Thomas L. Ambro on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and as Equal Justice Works Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center focused on reproductive rights.  She serves on the board of Too Young Too Wed and the leadership council of the Coalition for Women in National Security, and previously served on the advisory board of Planned Parenthood Global and the National Women’s History Museum.