Ambassador Nikki Haley
Ambassador Nikki R. Haley is the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She serves as a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet and National Security Council.
At the United Nations, Ambassador Haley is making sure the American people see value for their investment; advocating for reforms that make the organization more efficient, transparent, and accountable. Those reforms include comprehensive reviews of United Nations’ peacekeeping missions– negotiating over half a billion dollars in savings and renewing them on a mission by mission basis to ensure more effective and targeted operations, while at the same time preserving and maintaining the integrity of peacekeeping forces around the world, whose job it is to protect civilians in conflict.
On the United Nations Security Council, Ambassador Haley is working to defend Americans’ interests and keep our country safe. She spearheaded negotiations for the unanimous passage of the strongest sets of sanctions ever placed on North Korea — cutting off the regime’s exports by 90 percent, and its access to oil by 30 percent.
Ambassador Haley is a champion for human rights. During her Security Council presidency in April, 2017, she hosted the first ever session devoted solely to the subject. Her first overseas trip as Ambassador was to visit camps for Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey. And she is partnering with like-minded nations to reform the UN Human Rights Council, while challenging human rights violators across the globe.
Under her leadership, the United States has taken a strong stand against the chronic anti-Israel bias at the United Nations. These efforts have included successfully removing a false and defamatory report against Israel, which led to the resignation of the head of the United Nations’ agency behind the report.
Prior to becoming the twenty-ninth U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Haley was elected in 2010 as the first female and first minority Governor of South Carolina. She was reelected in 2014, where she served until she was appointed to the President’s cabinet in November of 2016.
During her tenure as governor the state’s unemployment rate hit a 15 year record low and South Carolina announced jobs in each of its 46 counties – more than 85,000 jobs in all. Governor Haley also ushered in the state’s largest education reform in decades – as a result, education funding was made more equitable for schools in the state’s poorest communities, reading in early grades became a priority, and classrooms were equipped with the latest technology.
Born in Bamberg, South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and a proud graduate of Clemson University, Ambassador Haley’s first job was keeping the books for her family’s clothing store -at the age of 13.
Ambassador Haley and her husband, Michael, a Captain in the Army National Guard and combat veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, have two children, Rena, 20, and Nalin, 16.
