Lauren D. Gilbert is an associate director with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative (IPSI) housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. In this role, she oversees research and programming focused on engaging with US, allied, and partner governments and other key stakeholders to shape strategies and policies to mitigate the most important rising security challenges facing the region. In particular, her work focuses on US-ROK-Japan trilateral cooperation, Korea-Japan relations, integrated deterrence, and trans-Atlantic-Pacific coordination in the aim of defending the rules-based international system.

Originally from Texas, Gilbert holds an MIS in International Cooperation from Seoul National University’s Graduate School of International Studies. Her thesis focused on an analysis of US-ROK-Japan trilateral security cooperation within the lenses of the balance of threat theory and the concept of national strategic identities. She also attained her BA with high honors in International Relations and Global Studies, with a concentration in International Security and a minor in Asian Studies, from the University of Texas at Austin. She also spent a year abroad studying in Korea University’s Division of International Studies.