Howie Wachtel is the director of Global Sanctions Advisory and Strategy at PayPal, where he oversees a team responsible for global sanctions policy, oversight, and sanctions investigations.  Prior to this role, he spent over a decade as a civil servant at the National Security Council, the US Department of State, and the US Mission to the United Nations.

At the National Security Council, Howie served as the deputy senior director for International Organization Affairs and previously as the Director for UN and Multilateral Affairs. He worked on a range of issues, including the UN, peacekeeping, international justice, multilateral sanctions, and human rights.  At the US Department of State, he served as acting coordinator of Sanctions Policy and previously held roles as deputy coordinator and senior adviser in the same office.  At the US Mission to the United Nations, he served as deputy chief of the Sanctions and Counterterrorism Unit, where he negotiated numerous UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. 

Howie began his career as a litigation associate at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP.  He has served as an adjunct professor at UVA, Duke, and NYU.  He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of directors of the Global Center on Cooperative Security and the Georgetown University Hoya Hoop Club.  Howie received a JD and LLM. in international and comparative law from the Duke University School of Law.  He holds a BS from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a General Course diploma from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  Howie lives in New Jersey with his wife and two daughters.