Paula J. Dobriansky

The Honorable Paula J. Dobriansky is an American national security expert with over 30 years of government and international experience across senior levels of diplomacy, business, and defense. She served as United States Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs from 2001 to 2009. She was also head of delegation and lead negotiator on U.S. climate change policy and the President’s Envoy to Northern Ireland. Her previous senior government positions include Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

Ambassador Dobriansky is currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Vice Chair of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security (Atlantic Council). From 2010 to 2012, she was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs at Thomson Reuters. During this time, she was appointed the Distinguished National Security Chair at the U.S. Naval Academy. From 1997 to 2001, she served as Senior Vice President and Director of the Washington Office of the Council on Foreign Relations and was the first George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy, and has served on the Defense Policy Board, the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and as Chair of EXIM Bank’s Chairman’s Council on China Competition (C4). She received a B.S.F.S. summa cum laude from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Soviet political/military affairs from Harvard University. She recently served as a Senior Leadership Fellow at the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom in the Fall of 2022.