Colleen Cottle was the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub where she helped advance the Council’s work on China and managed many of the Global China Hub’s daily operations.

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Cottle spent over a dozen years at the Central Intelligence Agency serving in a variety of analytic and managerial roles covering East and South Asia. She assessed global and East Asian trade and finance trends as an economic analyst; led multiple analytic teams covering East Asian economic, political, and technology issues; and served as a second-line supervisor of a multi-team unit responsible for multidisciplinary analysis on South Asia. Before that, she worked as a research analyst at a small economic consultancy and received a Fulbright student grant to study environmental economics at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Cottle holds an MA in international trade and investment strategy from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a BA in history, economics, and German from Marquette University, where she graduated summa cum laude. She also spent a year studying at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt and speaks German proficiently.