Samar S. Ali is a skilled mediator, a careful listener, and a compassionate teacher. Pulling up a chair to tables around the world, Ali engages in some of the most entrenched conflicts of our time, always with the intent of finding positive resolution through common ground.
In this pursuit, Ali is a Research Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, the founding President and CEO of Millions of Conversations, and co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy with Jon Meacham and former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam. She is currently working on producing a narrative series around the role disinformation contributed in the lead up to the attack on the US Capitol. She is also co-writing a book about practices of professional mediators and the seven steps Americans can take to heal our cultural rifts.
Ali has nearly two decades of experience in international relations and national security. Working at the intersection of national security, human rights, and economic development, Ali served as a White House Fellow in President Obama’s administration and as Assistant Commissioner of International Affairs in Tennessee Governor Haslam’s administration. While at the White House, she worked closely with U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, gaining experience in bilateral negotiations on behalf of the U.S. government and on countering radicalization at home and abroad. Ali also joined former President Jimmy Carter as part of an international delegation observing Egypt’s 2012 presidential election. As a conflict resolution practitioner and mediator, Ali joined an international mediating team in Syria from 2013-2016. She continues to brief White House officials, members of Congress, and cabinet officials.
Ali’s work has been featured in the New York Times, TIME, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, USA Today, the Washington Post, The Hill, Foreign Affairs, ACC Docket, and The Tennessean; on the BBC, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, and the Oprah Winfrey Show; at the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The World Economic Forum, National Security Action, and in other publications, podcasts, and venues.
Ali’s contributions have been recognized widely. She received the White House Fellows IMPACT Award and Vanderbilt University’s Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award. Ali is a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ali serves as Vice Chair of Generations for Peace with the Olympics Committee, as a member of St. Jude Hospital’s Executive Leadership Council, as a board member to the Foundation for Society, Law & Art in South Africa, as a board member of Bethany Beyond the Jordan Baptism Site Foundation, and she chairs the governance committee as a board member to WinROCK International. She is a New Pluralist Fellow and an Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow. She also co-founded a management consulting firm, Lodestone Advisory Group, which was named by Forbes in 2022 as one of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms.
Ali cowrote the opening ceremony on “Unity & Open Dialogue” for the 2022 World Cup with Laeta Kalogridis and Gregg Hurwitz, and co-produced the Heartland to Holy Land series in Bethlehem with music producer T Bone Burnett. Ali, T Bone Burnett, and Callie Khouri co-produced “John Lewis Celebration of Life” at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in 2021.
Ali received her JD and BA in Political Science from Vanderbilt University, where she specialized in foreign policy. She served as a law clerk of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and for Justice Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2007, she joined Hogan Lovell US in Washington D.C. and opened their offices in the Middle East.