Sophie Rutenbar is a Visiting Scholar with the Prevention and Peacebuilding Program at NYU’s Center for International Cooperation, which she joins as an International Affairs Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Before joining NYU, she was the Planning Officer for the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), based in Port-au-Prince, where she worked in the office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General conducting strategic planning. Among other previous positions in the UN, she worked for the Policy Planning Team of the United Nations Department of Peace Operations from 2017 to 2019, as well as from 2013 to 2015 as the first US-sponsored junior professional officer in the UN Secretariat. Before the UN, she worked in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and Zambia.
Through the Marshall Scholarship, she received master’s degrees in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College London and Human Rights from the London School of Economics, and she was a Eugene McDermott Scholar at the University of Texas at Dallas. A Truman Scholar, she previously served as co-president of the board of the Truman Scholars Association. She is also a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.