Security Mom: My Life Protecting the Home and Homeland

In “a lively debut…[with] plenty of enthusiastic ‘can-do’ advice” (Publishers Weekly), a Homeland Security advisor and a Pulitzer Prize–nominated columnist—and mother of three—delivers a timely message about American security: it begins at home.

Soccer Moms are so last decade. Juliette Kayyem is a “Security Mom.” At once a national security expert who worked at the highest levels of government, and also a mom of three, she’s lived it all—from anthrax to lice to the BP oil spill—and now she tells it all with her unique voice of reason, experience, and humility.

Weaving her personal story of marriage and motherhood into a fast-paced account of managing the nation’s most perilous disasters, Juliette recounts the milestones that mark the path of her unpredictable, daring, funny, and ultimately relatable life.

Security Mom is modern tale about the highs and lows of having-it-all parenthood and a candid, sometimes shocking, behind-the-scenes look inside the high-stakes world of national security. In her signature refreshing style, Juliette reveals how she came to learn that homeland security is not simply about tragedy and terror; it is about us as parents and neighbors, and what we can do every day to keep each other strong and safe. From stocking up on coloring books to stashing duplicate copies of valuable papers out of state, Juliette’s wisdom does more than just prepare us to survive in an age of mayhem—it empowers us to thrive. “You got this,” Juliette tells her readers, providing accessible advice about how we all can better prepare ourselves for a world of risks.

In government, academia, business, and media, Juliette Kayyem is one of the nation’s leading experts in homeland security. A former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, and the state of Massachusetts’ first homeland security advisor, Kayyem served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security where she handled crises from the H1N1 pandemic to the BP Oil Spill. Presently a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she also is the founder of Kayyem Solutions, LLC, one of the nation’s only female-owned security advising companies. Kayyem is a security analyst for CNN, a weekly show contributor on WGBH, Boston’s NPR station, and the host of the podcast Security Mom, also produced by WGBH. In 2013, she was the Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns in The Boston Globe. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Kayyem lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children. Security Mom is her first book.