Ronan Farrow

Ronan Farrow (born December 19, 1987) is an American human rights activist, freelance journalist, lawyer and government official. He served as a senior foreign policy official in the Obama administration, founding the State Department Office of Global Youth Issues and reporting to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as the United States' first Special Adviser for Global Youth Issues during the Arab Spring revolutions. Clinton highlighted Farrow's work and the youth engagement policy he and she designed in a 2012 speech in Tunisia. He assumed this role following two years as the State Department’s Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO Affairs in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Farrow's writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and other publications, focused primarily on human rights issues in the Horn of Africa. He has appeared as a frequent commentator on major networks and as an expert witness before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

Farrow has spoken extensively on engaging with marginalized people such as youth and women’s groups, including in recent commencement addresses at Dominican University of California and Bard College at Simon's Rock (later selected by the Huffington Post as one of 2011's top ten commencement speeches).

In 2008, Farrow was awarded Refugees International's McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award, for "extraordinary service to refugees and displaced people." In 2009, he was named by New York Magazine as their "New Activist" of the year and included on its list of individuals "on the verge of changing their worlds”. In 2010, Harper’s Bazaar named him their “up-and-coming politician" of the year.

In 2012, Forbes Magazine ranked him number one in Law and Policy on their "30 Under 30" most influential people list.

Farrow is a graduate of Yale Law School and a Rhodes scholar.