Young Alumni Award (Est. 2020)

The Young Alumni Award is bestowed upon alumni by the University of Illinois Alumni Association on behalf of the University of Illinois. This award recognizes alumni who are under the age of 35, and who have emerged as early leaders in their respective professional or civic endeavors. These individuals have demonstrated leadership and innovation and have proven themselves to be exceptional ambassadors for the University’s recent graduate and young alumni communities.

Adham Sahloul, ’15 LAS
Adham Sahloul, ’15 LAS, is a former U.S. national security official and served at the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as a special advisor in the Biden-Harris Administration from 2022 to 2025.

Sahloul is the co-founder and senior advisor of the North Star Policy Initiative. He is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan defense policy think tank in Washington, D.C. As a member of USAID Administrator Samantha Power’s Office of Policy, he focused on China and strategic competition. As a special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Sahloul advised senior-level department officials on policy, personnel and operational matters. He also served in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy on Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Middle East Crisis Cell.

Born in Chicago to Syrian immigrants, Sahloul was inspired to become a public servant by the vibrant civic life in the Chicagoland area. He began his career in southern Turkey in 2016, where he spent two years working on foreign aid, civilian protection, and hostage and detainee issues during the Syrian conflict. He was a research associate at the Atlantic Council think tank, where he focused on the Middle East, NATO and transatlantic affairs. Sahloul received his master’s degree from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 2019. He began his government service as a consultant at the U.S. Department of State. He volunteered as a foreign policy advisor to then–South Bend (Ind.) Mayor Pete Buttigieg in his 2020 presidential bid. Sahloul later volunteered to advise the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign in the same capacity.

Sahloul is a lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve. He commissioned as an intelligence officer in 2021 and graduated from Officer Development School in Newport, R.I. He deployed in 2024 to U.S. Navy Central Command in Manama, Bahrain, during the Red Sea crisis. New America named him a Next Generation U.S. foreign policy and national security expert in 2020, and the Middle East Policy Council named him to its 40 under 40 Middle East policy experts. Sahloul’s writing has been featured in Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, The Diplomat, Lawfare, Time, Axios and the Chicago Sun-Times. He and his wife, Dr. Diana Rayes, live with their two sons in northern Virginia.

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