Sarah Chayes

Sarah Chayes' remarkable trajectory has led her from reporting from Paris for National Public Radio, to working on the ground in Kandahar, Afghanistan in the midst of a burgeoning insurgency, to serving as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Internationally renowned for her innovative thinking on corruption and its implications, she has examined its workings in such countries as Nigeria and Honduras, Uzbekistan and Nepal. Her work has uncovered the reality that systemic corruption gives rise to some of the most dangerous crises of our day: violent ideological extremism, insurrections and popular revolutions, mass migration, environmental devastation. She has advised government officials, business leaders and reformers from Washington to Canberra. She is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban and Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, which won the 2016 L.A. Times Book Prize. She lives in Paw Paw, WV.