Amanda J. Rothschild is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s GeoStrategy Initiative. Her scholarship focuses on US foreign policy, international security, and diplomatic history. Rothschild is a national security strategist and a former presidential speechwriter.

She has served in senior positions at the White House, the National Security Council, and the State Department. During the Trump administration from 2017-2021, she was a senior advisor and member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and a special assistant to the president and senior national security speechwriter at the White House.

Rothschild is a recipient of the National Security Council’s Outstanding Service Award. She received her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she was a member of the MIT Security Studies Program, and completed predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. She received her BA, summa cum laude, in political science from Boston College, where she was a Rhodes Scholar finalist and member of the Division 1 varsity women’s ice hockey team. Her research and commentary have appeared in both scholarly and popular outlets, including International Security, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, the New York Times, Forbes, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Examiner.