Professional Affiliation

Principal, MDO Advisors

Expert Bio

Shanthi Kalathil is an advisor, consultant and speaker on national security, democratic resilience, and strategic competition in the information age. Under President Biden, Kalathil served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights at the National Security Council, where she oversaw the organization of the inaugural Summit for Democracy and the development of the first U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption, among other initiatives. Before joining the Biden Administration, Kalathil was the senior director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. Previously, she held positions at the US Agency for International Development and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and consulted for the World Bank and other international affairs organizations. A former Hong Kong-based reporter for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Kalathil has authored and edited numerous policy and scholarly publications on the role of information and technology in international affairs, 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). She serves on the boards of Radio Free Asia and the National Democratic Institute, and holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics.