Sean D. Carberry

Sean D. Carberry is an award-winning writer, editor, and foreign policy and national security expert with more than 20 years of experience in government and journalism. 

From 2018 through February 2021, Mr. Carberry served in the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General as managing editor of the Lead Inspector General quarterly reports to Congress on overseas contingency operations. In this position, he managed a team of writers, editors, analysts, and graphic designers, and coordinated with teams from the Department of State and USAID Offices of Inspector General to produce public and classified reports on wars and counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the Philippines, and in Africa. In 2019 the Inspector General awarded Mr. Carberry the Superior Civilian Service medal for his work on the Lead IG reports.

Prior to becoming managing editor in 2018, Mr. Carberry spent a year as the senior writer of the Lead IG quarterly report on Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan. Through those reports, he exposed a number of flawed programs, operations, and metrics in the Defense Department’s conduct of the war in Afghanistan, which led to changes in policy and messaging by the Department.

Before transitioning into his current career in government, Mr. Carberry was an award-winning journalist who reported from more than 30 countries. In 2016 and 2017, Mr. Carberry was Defense Reporter for Federal Computer Week and reported on cyber and IT in the defense and intelligence sectors.

From June 2012 through December 2014, he was NPR’s Kabul Correspondent. He covered the ongoing war, the 2014 Afghan presidential election, and daily life in the country until NPR closed the Kabul bureau in December 2014. Before moving to Kabul, Mr. Carberry spent a year as a producer for NPR’s foreign desk. He was part of the NPR team that won Peabody and Overseas Press Club awards for its coverage of the war in Libya and the Arab Spring.
Mr. Carberry joined NPR after spending four years as senior correspondent and supervising senior producer of the PRI program America Abroad. In his time with the program, he reported from more than 20 countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, and Egypt.

Mr. Carberry was the originator and lead producer and reporter of America Abroad’s award-winning three-hour series on Arab youth in 2010. That series identified and examined many of the underlying conditions that led to the Arab Spring and was awarded a 2011 Sigma Delta Chi award by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Before joining America Abroad in 2007, Mr. Carberry served as political producer, field producer, and reporter for WBUR FM—Boston’s NPR News Station. There he also served as technical director/ producer for The Connection, and produced and/or reported for On Point, Here & Now, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered. He has also reported for the PBS NewsHour, Reuters, The Diplomat, The Atlantic, VICE News, and has been a guest on numerous radio programs in the United States and Canada.

In addition to his journalism and public policy work, Mr. Carberry had careers as a political campaign manager, a recording engineer and record producer, and a multi-family mortgage banker who financed more than $100 Million in government-insured loans to nursing homes and housing developments.

Mr. Carberry graduated from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2006 with a Master of Public Administration and has a B.A. in Urban Studies from Lehigh University.