Under the leadership of Frederick Kempe since 2006, the Atlantic Council has achieved significant growth while considerably expanding its staff, work, and influence in areas that include international security, business and economics, energy and environment, and global issues of transatlantic interest ranging from Asia to the Middle East.

Before joining the Council, Kempe had more than a quarter century of distinguished work at the Wall Street Journal. In his last position with the paper, he served as Assistant Managing Editor (International) and “Thinking Global” Columnist. Prior to that, he was for seven years the longest-serving Editor and Associate Publisher of the Wall Street Journal Europe, simultaneously functioning as European Editor for the global Wall Street Journal from 2002 to 2005. Kempe joined the Wall Street Journal in 1981 in London before opening the paper’s Vienna bureau in 1984. He transferred to Washington, DC in 1986 as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, and in 1990 opened its Berlin bureau. In 2002, the European Voice selected Kempe as one of the fifty most influential Europeans, although he is American, and one of the four leading journalists in Europe.

Kempe is a graduate of the University of Utah and has a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he was a member of the International Fellows program in the School of International Affairs. His latest book, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth was published in May 2011 and is a New York Times best seller.

At the Atlantic Council, Barry Pavel focuses on emerging security challenges, defense strategies and capabilities, and key European and global defense issues. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, he was a career member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for almost eighteen years. From October 2008 to July 2010, he served as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Defense Policy and Strategy on the National Security Council staff, serving both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

Prior to this position, Pavel was the Chief of Staff and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities. From October 1993 to November 2006, Pavel led or contributed to a broad range of defense strategy and planning initiatives for both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. As the principal director for strategy, he also played a leading role in the conduct of the 2001 QDR, the global defense posture realignment, and the development of the 2005 US National Defense Strategy.

Pavel holds a master’s degree in security studies and an MPA in international relations from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, and a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and economics from Brown University.

Frederic C. Hof is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and specializes in Syria. Prior to becoming director, he was a resident senior fellow with the Center.

On March 28, 2012 President Obama conferred on Hof the rank of ambassador in connection with his new duties as special adviser for transition in Syria. Hof was previously the special coordinator for regional affairs in the US Department of State’s Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchell on the full range of Arab-Israeli peace issues falling under his purview and focusing on Syria-Israel and Israel-Lebanon matters. He joined the State Department in 2009 after serving as the president and CEO of AALC, limited company, an international business consulting and project finance firm formerly known as Armitage Associates LC. A 1969 graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Hof began his professional career as an Army officer. He is a Vietnam veteran and served as a US Army Middle East Foreign Area Officer, studying Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Tunisia and receiving a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School. He served as US Army attaché in Beirut, Lebanon and later in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as director for Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestinian Affairs.

Mirette F. Mabrouk is deputy director and director of research & programs at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Her area of research focus is Egypt, particularly economic reform, civil society, media, and international relations. She was formerly director of communications for the Economic Research Forum, the foremost economic think tank for the Arab Countries, Turkey, and Iran.

She was formerly an editor for Arab Media and Society, an online journal on the media’s role in Arab and Muslim societies published by the American University in Cairo’s Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research and The Middle East Centre at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, and an associate regional editor for the WorldPaper, a global paper based in Boston, Massachusetts

Stephen Grand leads the Middle East Strategy Task Force at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Grand is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World (housed within the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings), where he served as director from 2006 to 2013. He recently published a book, Understanding Tahrir Square: What Transitions Elsewhere Can Teach Us about the Prospects for Arab Democracy (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). He serves as Chairman of the Board of the Project on Middle East Democracy, Adviser to Ethica Global Alliance, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation. He is also the Founder and Codirector of the Egyptian Roundtable on Civic Life.

From 2004 to 2006, Grand was Director of the Aspen Institute’s Middle East Strategy Group. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at American University’s School of International Service and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. From 2002 to 2003, he was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Until June 2002, Grand served as Director of Programs at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) of the United States. Before joining GMF in 1997, he was a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, covering Europe and the New Independent States. In 1994, he was a Visiting Researcher at Charles University’s Center for Economics and Graduate Education in Prague. Grand earned a doctorate from the department of government at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the government honors program at the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar.

As Deputy Director of the Middle East Strategy Task Force, Jessica Ashooh focuses on how US foreign policy can more comprehensively address the growing challenges of state failure and violent extremism in the Middle East. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Ashooh spent a number of years based in Abu Dhabi, where she worked as a Senior Analyst in the UAE Foreign Ministry’s Policy Planning Department. In this capacity, she specialized on the crisis in Syria, and worked in close cooperation with the UAE Special Envoy for Syria to support the UAE’s engagement in the Geneva II peace process and with moderate elements of the Syrian political opposition. Ashooh has also worked as a consulting adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Ministry of Planning in Erbil, Iraq. Ashooh holds a doctorate and a master’s degree, both in international relations, from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College), which she attended as a Marshall Scholar. Her doctoral research focused on ideological and bureaucratic infighting in US foreign policy toward the Middle East. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Brown University.

Stefanie Hausheer Ali is the Associate Director for Programs at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. She is also a Research Fellow with the King Salman Center for Innovative Government in Riyadh. Stefanie holds a master’s degree in Middle East studies from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science and Italian studies from Saint Louis University. Stefanie speaks the Saudi dialect of Arabic, which she learned while hosting a number of Saudi students over the years.