Manal Fatima is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. In her role, she coordinates and facilitates the program’s activities, supporting the Iran Strategy Project, the Counterterrorism Project, and the Initiative’s work on Pakistan. Fatima focuses on the Gulf’s strategic security trajectory, with particular attention to nuclear energy and space developments.

Previously, she interned at the National Council on US-Arab Relations and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and worked at Limbik, a cognitive artificial intelligence company, where she applied AI and machine learning tools to counter online misinformation and disinformation.

Fatima holds a Bachelor of Arts in quantitative economics and Middle East studies from Smith College and spent a year at the London School of Economics as a General Course student. At Smith, she founded Fusayfsa’ (Mosaic), a student-led journal dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of the Middle East and North Africa through its people, and successfully published three issues as its editor-in-chief from 2020 to 2023. While in London, she also served as a MENA correspondent for LSE’s international affairs journal, the London Globalist.

Originally from Pakistan, Fatima approaches her work with a commitment to connecting regional realities with policy debates in Washington.