Anja Manuel

About

Former diplomat, author, and advisor on foreign policy, Anja Manuel is cofounder and principal—along with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, former national security advisor Stephen Hadley, and former secretary of defense Robert Gate—of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps US companies navigate international markets. Manuel is the author of the critically acclaimed This Brave New World: India, China, and the United States (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and numerous articles and papers. She is the executive director of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Aspen Security Forum, a premier bipartisan forum on foreign policy in the United States. From 2005 to 2007, she served as an official at the US Department of State, as special assistant to the under secretary for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, responsible for Asia policy. Earlier in her career, Manuel was an attorney at WilmerHale, working on Supreme Court and international cases and representing clients before the US Congress, Supreme Court, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. She began her career as an investment banker at Salomon Brothers in London. A graduate, cum laude, of Harvard Law School and Stanford University, Manuel also lectured and was a research affiliate at Stanford University from 2009 to 2019, teaching courses on US foreign policy in Asia and technology policy. Manuel is a frequent speaker on foreign policy and technology policy, is a commentator for TV and radio outlets (including NBC, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, Fox Business, BBC, and NPR), and writes for publications such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Fortune, and Newsweek, among others. Manuel currently serves on the corporate boards of Ripple Labs Inc. and Hims & Hers Health Inc., is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Defense Policy Board for the US Department of Defense.