Ms. SARAH WEISS MA’UDI is a Senior Adviser and Deputy Team Leader of the Legal, Budget and Reform Team in the Cabinet of the President of the 77th Session of the U.N. General Assembly. She is the first Israeli diplomat ever to be appointed to the Cabinet of the U.N. General Assembly President.
Prior to her appointment, Ms. Weiss Ma’udi served as the Legal Adviser, Counterterrorism and Sanctions Expert for the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations in New York (2018-2022). During the 75th session of the United Nations (2020-21), she was elected the Vice-Chairperson of the Sixth (Legal) Committee of the U.N. General Assembly, representing the Western European and Other States regional group.
Before being posted to the U.N. in New York in 2018, Ms. Weiss Ma’udi served as the Director of the International Law Department of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs at headquarters in Jerusalem (2013-2018). In that capacity, she served as a regional water and transboundary energy negotiator, and specialized in a variety of areas including maritime and land borders; law of the sea; European Union Law; the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; the Iran agreement; counterterrorism; human rights and humanitarian law; and legal issues pertaining to Israel’s peace treaties and the political process.
Ms. Weiss Ma’udi is also the founder of the Women in Diplomacy Network (WDN), a joint initiative of Israeli and foreign female diplomats.
Prior to coming to work at the Israel Foreign Ministry in 2007, Ms. Weiss Ma’udi worked as an associate lawyer for GKH & Co., one of Israel’s top corporate law firms. She also taught public international law at the Ono Academic College in Israel. Ms. Weiss Ma’udi completed her articled clerkship at the Israel Ministry of Justice’s International Treaties and Litigation Department, and also served as a comparative law researcher at the Israeli Supreme Court for the Honorable Justice Dorit Beinisch.
Weiss Ma’udi, a member of both the New York State Bar Association and the Israel Bar Association, is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (BA); holds a master’s degree in Regional Studies of the Middle East from Harvard University; and received her J.D. degree from New York University School of Law. She is fluent in both English and Hebrew, and is also proficient in Spanish and Arabic, with some knowledge of French. She is married and the proud mother of three.
