Usha Sahay

Sahay is a speechwriter for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Prior to joining the Office of the Secretary of Defense, she was a senior editor at POLITICO Magazine, where she was responsible for editing and commissioning op-eds and long-form reporting on foreign affairs. Usha is a 2021 graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she worked as a teaching assistant for former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. At the Kennedy School, she was the co-winner of the Robert Belfer Award for the best master’s thesis in international and global affairs. Before going to graduate school she worked as managing editor of War on the Rocks, which she also helped to found earlier in her career. She created, wrote, and hosted “A Most Terrible Weapon,” a War on the Rocks podcast about the first years of the nuclear age. Usha has also worked as a home page editor at the Wall Street Journal and a news editor at HuffPost. Immediately after her Scoville fellowship she stayed on at her host organization, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, as director of digital outreach.