Lisa Curtis is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program
at Center for New American Security (CNAS). She is a foreign policy and
national security expert with over 20 years of service in the U.S. government,
including at the National Security Council (NSC), CIA, State Department, and
Capitol Hill. Her work has centered on U.S. policy toward the Indo-Pacific and
South Asia, with a particular focus on U.S.-India strategic relations; Quad (United States, Australia,
India, and Japan) cooperation; counterterrorism strategy in South and Central Asia; and China’s
role in the region. Curtis served as deputy assistant to the president and NSC senior director for
South and Central Asia from 2017 to 2021. Curtis received the Secretary of Defense Medal for
Outstanding Public Service in December 2020 in recognition of her work at the NSC. From 2006 to
2017, Curtis was senior fellow on South Asia at the Heritage Foundation. She also served as a
professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, handling the South Asia
portfolio for former chairman of the committee, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), from 2003 to 2006.
Before that, she worked as a senior advisor in the South Asia Bureau at the State Department, where
she developed and coordinated U.S. policy on India-Pakistan relations. In the late 1990s, she
worked as a senior analyst on South Asia at the CIA, and from 1994 to 1998 served at the U.S.
embassies in Pakistan and India. Curtis currently is Board Chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, on the Leadership Council of Women in National Security (LCWINS), and a Member of the
Council on Foreign Relations. She received a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Indiana
University in December 1990.
