Qutaiba Idlbi is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs where he leads the Council’s work on Syria.

His experience includes researching the framework of political imprisonment in Syria as the Syria expert at the International Center for Transitional Justice, analyzing economic sanctions and forced displacement as a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, profiling refugee entrepreneurship in Turkey and Jordan with Building Markets, analyzing security policy in Turkey and Syria at the Global Policy Institute, and developing governance and security atmospheric reports for the US Joint Special Operations Command with Pechter Polls and the USAID Office of Transitional Initiatives with Caerus Associates.

Idlbi was also cofounder and vice president of People Demand Change, where he managed and evaluated governance, civil-society strengthening, and peacebuilding programs in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.

He is a 2013 Leaders for Democracy fellow with the Middle East Partnership Initiative at the US Department of State and a 2016 peace exchange fellow with the Dalai Lama.

Idlbi currently serves as a board member of multiple organizations advancing accelerated education, skills training, and women empowerment across refugee communities in the Middle East.

He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University and an associate degree in finance and banking from Damascus University.