She was also a special advisor to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the North Korea policy coordinator.

These included working as the director of EMILY's List, which provides money to pro-choice, female, Democratic political candidates.

The Clinton Administration had first arrived at the 1994 Agreed Framework under which North Korea agreed to freeze and dismantle its nuclear weapons program, including its main reactor at Yongbyon (Sherman continues to defend the 1994 deal and her involvement in it, stating that "during the Clinton administration not one ounce of plutonium was added to the North Korean stockpile").

[18][13] In 2001, following years of secret negotiations with Kim Jong Il, North Korea had promised not to produce, test or deploy missiles with a range of more than 300 miles.

In 1996, she described her mission as the first president of the Fannie Mae Foundation: In other words, it is broadly reaching out to American citizens and saying to them: "You can have access to affordable housing.

We have a beginning of a program, where we are going to work with community colleges and other partnerships to help folks take courses and get into the mortgage lending business, so that the people who sit across the table – they become loan officers – may look a little bit more like you, might understand your culture and your values.

[24] In this capacity, Sherman led the US team during six negotiating rounds between Iran and six world powers about Tehran's nuclear program and was the fourth-highest-ranking member of the department.

She was named part of a special task force by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to implement recommendations to improve protections for foreign service personnel, as a result of the 2012 Benghazi attack.

[31] On February 27, 2015, Sherman told a conference at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "The Koreans and Chinese have quarreled with Tokyo over so-called comfort women from World War II.

She continued, "Of course, nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it's not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy.

[32][33] On January 16, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden formally nominated Sherman to serve as deputy secretary of state under Antony Blinken.

[38] In December 2021, The Washington Post reported that Sherman lobbied to water down the language of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

[39] In May 2023, Reuters reported that Sherman did not support stricter export control rules on Huawei and wished to revive Blinken's canceled visit to China following the 2023 Chinese balloon incident.

[42] Sherman is married to Bruce Stokes, a former journalist and director for Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Center.