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.

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.

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, its digital venture on the Chinese economy.

I headed the Asia Practice at the advisory consultancy Eurasia Group, working for markets and corporate clients; was 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.