James Mazzarella is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center, where he provides strategic advice on the Center’s policy impact and strengthening relationships with key stakeholders in Washington and abroad. From 2017 to 2019, Mazzarella was at the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) and National Economic Council, first serving as director of international development and then senior director for global economics and development. While at NSC, he was a primary architect of a new government agency, the US International Development Finance Corporation, and a senior member of the US Group of Twenty and Group of Seven teams. His responsibilities at the NSC included coordinating US policy on foreign assistance, especially development finance and global infrastructure programs, as well as foreign anticorruption efforts. 

More recently, Mazzarella worked with the Global Innovation Fund, served as the head of policy and government affairs at the World Wildlife Fund, and was a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies. Prior to his work in the White House, he served as deputy vice president of congressional and public affairs for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and later served as an alternate member of MCC’s board of directors. He also ran New York State’s Office of Federal Affairs for almost a decade and served as chief of staff and press secretary to Congresswoman Susan Molinari of New York. In addition to his work at the Atlantic Council, Mazzarella is currently on the steering committee of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network.