Naz El-Khatib

Naz El-Khatib has worked at senior levels across the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He is currently a senior research fellow with the Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Most recently, Naz served as the senior advisor for policy to the deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked on major U.S. foreign policy priorities, principally in Asia and Europe. Prior to this role, he started, hired, and led the foreign policy team at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), America’s development bank, with over $45 billion in active investments in over 100 countries. He concurrently served as the deputy chief of staff for policy and the principal foreign policy advisor to DFC’s CEO. Naz started his government service as a policy advisor to the counselor of the State Department, while concurrently advising the chief of staff to the secretary of state on internal initiatives. 

Before serving in government, Naz held a range of roles across sectors. He began his career in the private sector at McKinsey, where he ultimately served as the deputy chief of staff to the firm’s global managing partner. He also worked briefly in asset management at Bridgewater and in law at WilmerHale. Following graduate school, Naz served as associate director for policy at National Security Action, a foreign policy research and advocacy non-profit organization. He left that organization to serve full-time on President Biden’s transition team in 2020.

Naz’s foreign policy writing and analysis has been featured in a range of publications and other media. Naz earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he served on Stanford University’s Board of Trustees as a graduate student board member. He also holds an M.Phil. in international relations and politics from the University of Cambridge, where he was a St. John’s College Benefactors’ Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale, where he graduated summa cum laude.