Amb. Paula J. Dobriansky, Ph.D.
Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, a foreign policy expert and diplomat specializing in national security affairs, is Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs. She brings over 30 years of government and international experience across senior levels of diplomacy, business, and defense.
She was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs at Thomson Reuters and held the Distinguished National Security Chair at the U.S. Naval Academy. Her high-level government positions include Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, President’s Envoy to Northern Ireland, President Reagan’s National Security Council Director of European and Soviet Affairs, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy, Dobriansky also served on the Defense Policy Board, the Secretary of State’s Foreign Policy Board and as Chair of ExIm Bank’s Council on China Competition.
She has a BSFS summa cum laude from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and an MA and Ph.D. in Soviet political/military affairs from Harvard University. She has received high-level international recognition from the governments of Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania and Colombia and has five Honorary Doctorate degrees.
She is a Trustee of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and recipient of the Foundation’s Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom in 2008. Her father, the Honorable Lev E. Dobriansky, was a Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
