Brianne Todd is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a distinguished policy practitioner and scholar specializing in US foreign policy and regional security issues in Central Asia. She currently serves as a professor of practice at the US Department of Defense’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, where she leads initiatives and strategic engagement across the region. Additionally, she serves as an adjunct professor with the Center for Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she teaches a graduate-level seminar on power and violence in Central Asia.

Todd previously served as director for Central Asian affairs at the National Security Council between 2023 and 2025, where she coordinated US policy across diplomatic, economic, defense, and intelligence lines of effort. Her leadership helped advance US strategic objectives in a complex and evolving regional landscape, most notably through the first-ever C5+1 Leaders’ Summit. Previously, she held key roles at the US Department of State and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, earning commendations for her contributions to US policy on Central Asia and Afghanistan.

With a deep commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and professional engagement, Todd is a lifetime member of the Central Eurasian Studies Society and active in organizations such as the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, and Women in Defense. Todd holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science, Russian language, literature, and Russian and East European studies from the University of Notre Dame, and a Master of Arts in Eurasian, Russian, and East European studies from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.