Lisa C. Sawyer is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is the executive director of the JPMorganChase Center for Geopolitics. She brings almost twenty years of foreign policy and national security experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Sawyer most recently served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy and the inaugural special coordinator for Afghanistan.
She also previously served at the White House in both the Biden and Obama administrations. As special advisor in the Office of the Vice President, she advised former Vice President Kamala Harris on all matters related to Europe, Russia, and defense. She also served on former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council staff as director for NATO and European strategic affairs, where she led the US government’s preparations for the NATO Summit in Wales.
She has held a variety of positions within the Department of Defense, including chief of staff to the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, NATO policy adviser, and director for North Africa throughout the Arab Spring. Sawyer received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service for her contributions during the 2011 military intervention in Libya. She began her career as a presidential management fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and has served at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul and at NATO headquarters in Brussels, among other assignments.
Outside of government, Sawyer was a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She was also vice president for international policy at JPMorgan Chase. Sawyer has testified on European security policy before committees in the House and Senate and her analysis has been featured in major news outlets such as the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, MSNBC, and others. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Baylor University with a BA in international studies and holds an MA in international affairs from George Washington University.