U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2017-2019)
Nikki R. Haley is the former United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She served as a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet and the National Security Council.
At the United Nations, Ambassador Haley ensured the American people saw value for their investment -introducing reforms that made the organization more efficient, transparent, and accountable. In a two-year period, she negotiated over $1.3 billion in savings, including rightsizing UN peacekeeping missions to make them more effective and targeted, while improving their ability to protect civilians.
In the UN Security Council, Ambassador Haley worked to defend Americans' interests and keep our country safe. She spearheaded negotiations for the passage of the strongest set of sanctions ever placed on North Korea for its nuclear weapons program, cutting off the regime's exports by 90 percent and its access to oil by 30 percent.
As UN Ambassador Haley championed human rights. She challenged human rights violators across the globe, standing up to oppressive regimes in Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia. During the U.S. presidency of the UN Security Council, she hosted the first-ever session devoted solely to promoting human rights. She traveled the world visiting people oppressed by their own governments to see firsthand the challenges they face and to work with them directly on life-improving solutions—from Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey, to internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, and Venezuelan migrants walking miles every day to cross the Colombian border for food and medicine.
During her time as ambassador, the United States stood proudly with its allies, repeatedly taking a strong and principled stand against the chronic anti-Israel bias at the United Nations. In the UN Security Council, she proudly issued the first American veto in six years defending the United States’ sovereign right to move our Embassy to Jerusalem—Israel’s true capital.
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. Reelected in 2014, she served as Governor until confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in January of 2017.
Under Governor Haley’s leadership, South Carolina was a national leader in economic development. Known as the “Beast of the Southeast,” South Carolina’s unemployment rate hit a 15-year low, saw over $20 billion in new capital investment, and her administration announced new jobs in every county in the state, over 85,000 total.
Governor Haley also ushered in the state's largest education reform in decades—making education funding more equitable for schools in the state's poorest communities, prioritizing reading in early grades, and equipping classrooms with the latest technology.
Born in Bamberg, South Carolina, she is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a proud graduate of Clemson University. In her first job, Ambassador Haley kept the books for her family's clothing store—at the age of 13.
Ambassador Haley and her husband, Michael, a Captain in the South Carolina Army National Guard and combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand Province, have two children, Rena, 20, and Nalin, 17.