She was President Joe Biden's first nominee to be an assistant administrator for the United States Agency for International Development for the Middle East, after he announced her nomination on July 19, 2021.

[5] She edited, and contributed two chapters to, a book entitled How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process, published in 2005.

[1] She was one of the first recipients of the Rabin-Peres Peace Award, established by President Bill Clinton, administered by Tel Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, and funded with the proceeds of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, along with Yassir Arafat, in 1994.

She coordinated policy on democracy and human rights for the bureau and oversaw the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).

She returned to the Brookings Institution in March 2012, as director of the Center for Middle East Policy, where she remained a senior fellow.