Roland McKay is an undergraduate capstone instructor at the Jackson School (2023-2024). A career member of the Foreign Service, he served most recently as Director for Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council (2022-2023) and Iran Watcher at the U.S. Embassy in London (2019-2022). Other overseas assignments include Sana’a, Yemen and Istanbul, Turkey. In Washington, he served as the Lebanon Desk Officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of State. He was a Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy for the 2018-2019 academic year. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he studied Arabic in Syria on a Fulbright scholarship.