My Biography

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My Biography

I'm Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States and the first global think tank, where I oversee its work at offices in Washington, New Delhi, and Singapore on both East Asia and South Asia.

I also have extensive experience advising CEOs, boards of directors, and C-Suites across market and corporate clients as a former senior advisor at Macro Advisory Partners, a London-based global advisory firm, and as the Head of the worldwide Asia Practice at the New York-based advisory consultancy Eurasia Group, where I am now a senior advisor. I was the 2019-2020 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia.   Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics from Stanford University, then two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University, my career has spanned government, markets, business, and nonprofits, and three regions of Asia.

American Diplomat

From 2001 to 2009, in the Bush Administration, I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia, Member of the Policy Planning Staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific, advised two Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and was a close China adviser to Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. I received five Superior Honors Awards from the State Department.

Negotiator

I led several high-stakes diplomatic negotiations. During the intensive final phase of the U.S.-India civil nuclear initiative from July to October 2008, I co-chaired the coordinating team charged with moving the initiative through the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and then to Congress, where it became the U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act and led bilateral negotiations of the key commercial letter of intent.

I negotiated Kazakhstan’s “Madrid Commitments” to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and a set of hard-won bilateral agreements with the government of Turkmenistan. I have extensive policy experience with North and South Korea, Japan, and Australia, working with or joining U.S. negotiating teams across a range of issues with these governments.

Thought Leader

Outside of government, I was founding Vice Chairman and first Executive Director of The Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago, established by former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Hank Paulson, and cofounder of MacroPolo, a digital platform on the Chinese economy.

I was a Senior Fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations; taught at Harvard University as Lecturer on Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School as Lecturer of National Security Affairs; and was Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Author and Scholar

I'm the author of books and monographs, including The United States in the New Asia, and China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age, selected by Foreign Affairs as a best book on Asia of 2003. I've authored major reports on Asian technology futures, especially on Korea and Taiwan, including The Korean Way With Data. I publish widely on geopolitics and geoeconomics, U.S. strategy in Asia, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Central Asia, and Australia.

I'm a member of the advisory board of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, its co-chair in 2023, 2025, and 2026, and was its 2023 Leadership Honoree. I'm also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Cosmos Club.

Read my selected publications

Photo Gallery

With Chinese President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping

With India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a year after completing the U.S.-India nuclear deal

With former Chinese president and Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin

Traveling with former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Hank Paulson

With Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen

Eyeball to eyeball with Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa

Negotiating with Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on our last day in the State Department

With New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg

Press conference in Kathmandu, Nepal, after a round of talks with Prime Minister G.P. Koirala and the opposition, including Maoist ex-guerilla leader Prachanda