Sarah Margon Joins CNAS as Adjunct Senior Fellow

Washington, June 26, 2026 — The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) today announced that Sarah Margon has joined the Center as an adjunct senior fellow.

Margon brings more than two decades of experience at the intersection of policy, strategy, and politics, working extensively on making U.S. foreign and national security policy more effective across government, philanthropy, civil society, and the private sector.

“Sarah has devoted her career to making American foreign policy more principled and more effective,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of CNAS. “Her breadth of experience, paired with her commitment to democracy and human rights, will strengthen our work at a moment when these issues are central to American security.”

Margon is the founder and principal of Windsong Advisory, a strategic consulting firm. She previously worked at Soros Fund Management, which manages the Open Society Foundations’ endowment, and earlier served as Open Society’s director of U.S. foreign policy.

Earlier in her career, Margon was Washington director at Human Rights Watch, associate director for sustainable security at the Center for American Progress, senior foreign policy advisor to Senator Russ Feingold, and staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs. In 2021, President Joe Biden nominated her to serve as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor.