Jessica Ashooh
DPhil awarded May 2011 from University of Oxford for dissertation focusing on ideological influences on US foreign policy toward the Middle East under George W. Bush. Case studies include Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Libya. Also taught undergraduate courses, including core international relations theory and US foreign policy.
Jessica also holds an MPhil from Oxford (earned as a Marshall Scholar) and an AB from Brown, both in international relations. From 2015 to 2017, she served as the Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council's Middle East Strategy Taskforce, a bipartisan initiative co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley on how US policy can better address issues of legitimacy and state failure in the region. She is currently a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. She is also a term member of the Council of Foreign Relations and a life member of Chatham House.
Jessica has also been active professionally in the region serving as a policy advisor to a variety of governments, including four years in the UAE Foreign Ministry's Policy Planning Department, where she specialized on the Syria crisis. She has also worked as an advising consultant to the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government's Ministry of Planning.
She also has background in the arena of political risk in the private sector, having worked for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and as a Shift Editor at Oxford Analytica.