Born to a
Jewish family, the daughter of an Iraqi father and Rhoda Miriam Spielman Tzemach (died 1987). Her mother raised her as a single parent in
Greenbelt, Maryland,[8][2] her grandmother was Frances Cohen Spielman (died 1999), a
World War II veteran of
Women's Army Corps and an independent film distributor during the 1940s who later founded
First Run Features.[9][10][11][12] Her paternal family comes from
Iraq, partly from
Iraqi Kurdistan. Her father was born in
Baghdad but was forced to leave the country as a child due to his religion.[13][2]
Lemmon earned a BA in journalism summa cum laude from the
University of Missouri School of Journalism.[5] From 1997 to 2004, she worked in the
ABC News Political Unit, where she covered presidential politics and public policy issues, and served as producer in the first year of This Week with George Stephanopoulos.[14] During that time, she visited
Spain as a
Fulbright Scholar and
Germany as a
Robert Bosch Fellow.[15][14]
In 2004, Lemmon started MBA study at
Harvard. During the study, she began writing about women's entrepreneurship in conflict and post-conflict zones, traveling to
Rwanda and
Afghanistan.[16][14] Lemmon graduated with an MBA two years later, and received the
HBS 2006 Dean's Award for her work on the subject.[16] She then continued working on women's entrepreneurship in the world, covering more countries such as
Bosnia and
Liberia.[17][18]
From 2006 to 2010, she worked in the executive office and in emerging markets at the global investment firm
PIMCO, leading public policy analysis.[19][14] During the time, she consulted for the
World Bank and co-authored a 2008 report Doing Business: Women in Africa.[20][14] In 2010, she was featured on the cover of the
HBS alumni magazine for her work on entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict zones.[19]
Writing and public speaking career
In 2011, Lemmon wrote the first
Tina BrownNewsweek cover article, featuring an interview with
Hillary Clinton on former Secretary of State's push to put women at the center of U.S. foreign policy.[21] The same year, her book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, was published by
HarperCollins. The story about
Kamila Sidiqi, a young Afghan entrepreneur who supports her community under the
Taliban rule, was the New York Times nonfiction bestseller.[22] In December 2011, she gave the opening talk at
TEDxWomen, in which she described why investing in women can make the difference for the global economy.
[23]
She is also the author of Entrepreneurship in Postconflict Zones, a 2012
CFR working paper that argues for comprehensive, long-term, collaborative approaches to help entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict countries overcome challenges in accessing capital, markets, networks, and business skills training.[24] The same year, she began writing a number of pieces on women and girls for
The Atlantic,[25] including We Need to Tell Girls They Can Have It All (Even If They Can't),[26] which was mentioned in
Sheryl Sandberg's 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and The Will to Lead,[27] and on the lessons she learned growing up in a community of single mothers.[28]
In October 2013, Lemmon broke the first media story about how the military could not pay death benefits to fallen soldiers killed in action during the
government shutdown.[29] The story attracted the attention of
the Pentagon and the
White House, and
Fisher House eventually stepped in to fill the funding gap until the shutdown ended.[30] In December of the same year, she published a policy innovation memorandum, titled Banking on Growth, making the case for why the
United States should support the creation of an American development bank to invest in small and medium-businesses in the world's toughest economies.[31]
In 2014, she authored two
CFR working papers on the topic: High Stakes for Young Lives, coauthored with Lynn ElHarake, surveys strategies to stop child marriage;[32] and Fragile States, Fragile Lives that examines the correlation between child marriage and state fragility.[33] This work culminated in a
CFR e-book publication Child Brides, Global Consequences: How to End Child Marriage.[34] In September the next year, Lemmon reported on the issue of child and forced marriage in the
United States for the
PBS NewsHour in a two-part series.[35]
Her next book, Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield, was published by
HarperCollins in 2015. It tells the story of
CST-2, a unit of women handpicked from across the
U.S. army to serve on combat operations alongside
Army Rangers and
Navy SEALs in
Afghanistan, and of the remarkable hero at its heart: First Lieutenant Ashley White.[36][37] The book, Lemmon's second New York Times bestseller,[38] is being made into a film by
Reese Witherspoon and
Bruna Papandrea, with
Lesli Linka Glatter and Molly Smith Metzler attached to direct and write it respectively.[39] Lemmon also gave a
TED Talk on Ashley's War at
TEDWomen 2015, receiving more than one million views.[40]
In 2021,
Penguin Press published The Daughters of
Kobani, the latest book authored by Lemmon. It is about a group of
Syrian Kurdish women fighting against
ISIS.[41] According to
Kirkus Reviews, it is "a well-told story of contemporary female warriors and the complex geopolitical realities behind their battles."[42] The story, being another New York Times bestseller,[43] has been optioned by
HiddenLight Productions for TV.[44]