Mona Yacoubian

Mona Yacoubian is senior adviser and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She has more than 30 years of experience working on the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on conflict analysis, governance and stabilization challenges, and conflict prevention. She was previously vice president of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she managed field programming in Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia as well as Washington, DC–based staff. In 2019, she served as executive director of the congressionally appointed Syria Study Group. From 2014–17, Yacoubian served as deputy assistant administrator in the Middle East Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she had responsibility for programming across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Prior to joining USAID, Yacoubian was a senior adviser at the Stimson Center and a special adviser on the Middle East at USIP. From 1990–98, Yacoubian served as the North Africa analyst in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and various other outlets, and she has testified to Congress six times. Yacoubian was a Fulbright scholar in Syria, where she studied Arabic at Damascus University from 1985–86. She has held an international affairs fellowship with the Council on Foreign Relations and is a CFR member. She earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s in public policy from Duke University.