Shanthi Kalathil

Shanthi Kalathil is a distinguished advisor, consultant, and speaker specializing in national security, democratic resilience, and strategic competition in the information age. She is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School and a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In her previous role as deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for democracy and human rights at the National Security Council under President Joe Biden, she oversaw the organization of the president's inaugural Summit for Democracy and the development of the first U.S. strategy on countering corruption, among other key initiatives.

Before joining the Biden administration, Kalathil served as senior director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she oversaw work on authoritarian challenges to democracy in the information age. Her career spans stints at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Bank, and other international affairs organizations, highlighting her expertise at the intersection of technology, governance, and international affairs.

A former Hong Kong–based reporter for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Kalathil has authored and edited numerous policy and scholarly publications, including Diplomacy, Development and Security in the Information Age (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, 2013), and (with Taylor C. Boas) Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).

Kalathil sits on several boards and advisory councils, including Radio Free Asia and the National Democratic Institute. She holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics and Political Science.