Paula Dobriansky

Ambassador Paula Dobriansky is a diplomat and foreign policy expert who specializes in national security affairs and has three decades of experience across senior levels of diplomacy, business, and defense. She is a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. During the Bush administration, she served as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and as the President’s Envoy to Northern Ireland for which she received the Secretary of State’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal for her contributions to the historic devolution of power in Belfast. As a Reagan Administration NSC Director of European and Soviet Affairs, she crafted U.S. policy toward Central/Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations (where she was the first George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies) and the American Academy of Diplomacy, Dobriansky served on the Defense Policy Board, the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and was Chair of EXIM bank’s Council on China Competition. She is a Trilateral Commission Trustee, a member of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service’s Board, and is Co-Chair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Ukraine’s Economic Reconstruction. Dobriansky received a B.S.F.S. summa cum laude in International Politics from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Soviet political/military affairs from Harvard University.