Naz El-Khatib is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

El-Khatib has worked at senior levels across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Most recently, he served as the senior advisor for policy to the deputy secretary at the US Department of State, where he advised the United States’ second-highest ranking diplomat on foreign policy, principally in Asia and Europe. Prior to this role, he started, hired, and led the global policy team at the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the United States’ development bank, with over $45 billion in active investments in over one hundred countries. He concurrently served as the deputy chief of staff for policy and the principal foreign policy advisor to DFC’s chief executive officer. El-Khatib started his government service as a policy advisor to the counselor of the State Department, while concurrently advising the chief of staff to the secretary of state on internal initiatives.

Before serving in government, El-Khatib held a range of roles across sectors. He began his career in the private sector at McKinsey, where he ultimately served as the deputy chief of staff to the firm’s global managing partner. He also worked briefly in asset management at Bridgewater and in law at WilmerHale. Following graduate school, El-Khatib served as associate director for policy at National Security Action, a foreign policy research and advocacy nonprofit. He left that organization to serve full-time on former US President Joe Biden’s transition team in 2020.

El-Khatib’s foreign-policy writing and analysis has been featured in a range of publications and other media. El-Khatib earned his JD from Stanford Law School, where he served on Stanford University’s board of trustees as a graduate student board member. He also holds a Master of Philosophy in international relations and politics from the University of Cambridge, where he was a St. John’s College Benefactors’ Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale, where he graduated summa cum laude. El-Khatib is a diehard Lakers and Steelers fan. He is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children.