Jared Cohen (born November 24, 1981 in Weston, Connecticut) is a non-fiction author and member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, where he has served since September 2006. Initially brought in by Condoleezza Rice as the youngest member in history, he was kept on to play an important role under Hillary Clinton. In this capacity, he focuses on counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization, Middle East/South Asia, Youth, Innovation, and Technology. Prior to his work at the State Department, Cohen received his BA from Stanford University and his M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Cohen has become a specialist in the use of technology to advance American interests throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. In December 2008, Cohen assembled the first ever Alliance of Youth Movements, which was a summit of 21st century movements that relied almost entirely on technology to affect change. In April 2009, he took senior executives from Silicon Valley to Iraq on the first ever US government technology delegation. During June 2009 he intervened to keep the Twitter network online, delaying scheduled engineering work, so that supporters of the Iranian opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, favored by the U.S., could continue using the network to plan anti-government activities.

Cohen is author of several books. His first, One Hundred Days of Silence: American and the Rwanda Genocide," was published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and chronicles U.S. policy toward Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide. His second book, "Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East," was published by Penguin Books (Gotham) in October 2007 and has also been published as an audio book and translated into Dutch. Cohen's work on Children of Jihad has received the endorsements of names like Tom Brokaw, Frank Carlucci, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Lugar, and Chris Matthews. Children of Jihad was starred by Kirkus Review and selected as one of the "Best Books of 2007." Additional publications include The Passive Revolution: Is Political Resistance Dead or Alive in Iran (Hoover Digest, 2005), Iran's Young Opposition (SAIS Review, 2006), and "Diverting the Radicalization Track" (Policy Review, Spring 2009).

Jared frequently appears in the media: he has been featured in The New Yorker and appeared on The Colbert Report, CNN, CBS, ABC, Headline News, Current TV, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, BBC, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, and a variety of other TV and radio programs both domestic and international. He is frequently asked to speak at domestic and international conferences hosted by think tanks, the public sector, the military, the private sector, and foundations.

In April/May 2007, Cohen was a judge at the Tribeca Film Festival along with Whoopi Goldberg and Padma Lakshmi.

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