Sarah Labowitz is a leading expert on disaster response and the intersection of public policy and global supply chains. As a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, she focuses on how governments and international institutions prepare for, respond to, and recover from large-scale crises—from natural disasters to complex emergencies. Her work examines how breakdowns in logistics, infrastructure, and governance shape the effectiveness of disaster relief, with an emphasis on improving coordination, transparency, and accountability in high-stakes response efforts.

Earlier in her career, Labowitz served in senior roles at the U.S. Department of State, where she worked on international economic policy and labor rights. She was the co-founder of NYU's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and she previously served as the Policy Director of the ACLU Texas. Across her research and public engagement, she brings a multidisciplinary lens to disaster response—bridging policy, finance, and operations to better understand how systems can fail in moments of crisis and how they can be strengthened to save lives. Her work offers timely insights into how governments and institutions can build more resilient, effective responses in an era of increasingly frequent and severe disasters.