Sarah Chayes is an award winning journalist, author, former Senior Associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sarah Chayes.

Her latest book is ON CORRUPTION IN AMERICA AND WHAT IS AT STAKE, published by Knopf. Her fluency in French, Arabic and Pashto, not only allowed her to be an NPR reporter in Paris, North Africa, and the Balkans from 1996 to 2002, but after 9/11 she reported from Afghanistan.

In 2002, she left reporting to contribute to rebuilding that country. She arrived in Kandahar two days after the Fall of the Taliban and lived there til 2009, where she helped establish the Arghand Cooperative in 2005, and became intimately acquainted with kleptocracy.

In 2010, Sarah Chayes became a special adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. In this capacity, she contributed to strategic US policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab Spring. Her previous books include The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban and Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.